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Why I Still Believe in This Bill [by Jacob Hacker]
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| Contributor | Brandonius Maximus |
| Last Edited | Brandonius Maximus Dec 21, 2009 06:00pm |
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| Category | Commentary |
| Author | Jacob S. Hacker |
| Media | Weekly News Magazine - New Republic, The |
| News Date | Monday, December 21, 2009 11:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | Now that the core demand of progressives has been removed from the Senate health care bill--namely, the public health insurance option--should progressives continue to support the effort?
For me, the question is particularly difficult. I have been the thinker most associated with the public option, which I’ve long argued is essential to ensuring accountability from private insurers and long-term cost control. I was devastated when it was killed at the hands of Senator Joe Lieberman, not least because of what it said about our democracy -- that a policy consistently supported by a strong majority of Americans could be brought down by a recalcitrant Senate minority.
It would therefore be tempting for me to side with Howard Dean and other progressive critics who say that health care reform should now be killed.
It would be tempting, but it would be wrong.
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The public option was always a means to an end: real competition for insurers, an alternative for consumers to existing private plans that does not deny needed care or shift risks onto the vulnerable, the ability to provide affordable coverage over time. I thought it was the best means within our political grasp. It lay just beyond that grasp. Yet its demise--in this round--does not diminish the immediate necessity of those larger aims. And even without the public option, the bill that Congress passes and the President signs could move us substantially toward those goals. |
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