Monday, June 8

How do you defeat a health care reform proposal in Washington? By asking Congress to support a gutted version that makes it sound like something it’s not.

Essentially, that is former Clinton labor secretary Robert Reich’s analysis of the state of the debate over health care legislation so far. The biggest issue on the table is the so-called public option, which would create a new government vehicle for the purchase of individual health insurance.

But insurers are fearful that the plan would drive down prices, or at least provide unfair competition. So they are proposing to take the punch out of it by promoting regional, or even state, variations, where authorities can be more easily bought off, reducing pressure on more traditional plans.

We should be having a national conversation about this, pro and con. I don’t doubt that there are valid arguments to be made on each side. Personally, I like the public option and outlined my reasons in a past post.

Others disagree. They believe that health care should be run purely as a competitive business, and the government only makes the process more inefficient by sticking its nose into the pie. For details on that view, see this recent analysis in The National Review.

But Washington often takes what I prefer to call the weasel-route. That is, legislation is passed that seems to mean one thing, but in practical application means something entirely different.

You can see what I mean by reading Reich’s post in its entirety, here. But basically, insurers and pharmaceutical interests are trying to hatch a bill that would seem to allow for a public option in name only. But it would be rendered completely ineffective.

Regardless of where you come down on the issue, I’d recommend e-mailing your U.S. rep as well as your senators and telling them to have enough guts to take a clear stand. We should be able to tell, after legislation comes out of Congress during the next few weeks, whether we have a public option or we don’t.

You can’t please all the people all the time. But we shouldn’t let our elected officials hide behind obfuscation and hollow legislation that fools people into thinking something’s been accomplished when it has not.





