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Pelosi, The Blue Dogs, And The Public Option

August 21st, 2009 |

The Health Plan And The Democrats Are In Disarray

Just one day after HHS (Health and Human Services) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and President Obama both said a public option wasn’t essential to health care reform, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she wouldn’t be able to pass the health-care legislation in her chamber if the measure doesn’t include a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers.

“There’s no way I can pass a bill in the House of Representatives without a public option".

Nancy Pelosi

The public option, which is a central component of President Barack Obama’s effort to overhaul the nation’s health-care system, has emerged as a flash point in his party, and suggestions by administration officials in recent days that the White House might be willing to give up on the public plan drew protests from many House Democrats.

As a result of the dissent, Obama did an about face and again reiterated his support for the proposal when speaking to a group of community volunteers in Washington.

“If we have a public option in there it will help keep insurance companies honest".

Seeing the total democratic disarray, it was somewhat unsurprising to read the following in the Washington Post.

"President Obama’s advisers acknowledged Tuesday that they were unprepared for the intraparty rift that occurred over the fate of a proposed public health insurance program, a firestorm that has left the White House searching for a way to reclaim the initiative on the president’s top legislative priority".

Just How Big Is The Disarray?

The Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Gov. Howard Dean says that "without a public option, health care reform should wait until another time".

Blue Dog Democrat Allen Boyd said at a town hall that "Congress may need to start over on health care reform".

Wyoming Senator Mike Enzi, who is one of six senators working on a bipartisan compromise in the Senate Finance Committee wrote in a USA Today opinion piece yesterday,

“For millions of Americans, the government-run plan would turn into a bureaucratic nightmare. In the finance committee, six of us leading the negotiations are working from the premise that there will not be a government-run plan".

The fact that both Sebelius and Obama were willing to publicly distance themselves from the public option indicates that they believe that the opposition is very real and very viable, and it is, because the debate holds dire ramifications for the Democratic party.

The battle lines have now been drawn, with liberal ideologues like Pelosi, Weiner and Waters on one side and the rest of the party on the other and if Pelosi and Co. succeed in getting their version of the bill passed then the party will further distance itself from the majority of the American people, and the democrats will pay a very heavy price in next year’s elections.

The Operation Was A Success But The Patient Died

One of the present versions of the bill that is circulating, would cut back on anesthesia by over 50%, and the proposal has already drawn fire from a wide spectrum of medical practitioners, with one surgeon saying,

"In surgery, people die in days and weeks, and a doctor has time to fix a mistake, but in obstetrics and anesthesiology, they die in minutes and seconds".

A fact which many democrats might do well to ponder, because if they don’t, they’ll have a Republican congress soon enough.

Every wonderful idea is probably marked by clarity and simplicity, and after you’ve heard or read about it, you can easily explain it.