Depending on which Roosevelt administration one starts the clock under, we are roughly a century or 70 years into comprehensive health-care reform, and we still don't know -- or, I should say, we refuse to accept -- how to cover all Americans.
This in itself is a remarkable achievement. The far larger balance of the civilized world stands back and stares, snickers, marvels and gapes at our democratic ineptitude; out of more than 300,000,000 Americans, nearly all of whom are in fundamental agreement on the goal of universal coverage, we can't find 60 -- a mere 60, mind you -- who can get together and say how.
Nevertheless, the U.S. Senate inched closer last night, however far the goalposts remain. Reported developments are, of course, imperfect, but we've lived with far worse imperfection for decades.
And with Americans talking and worrying exclusively about jobs -- not mandates and fiscal cost-curves -- I'd support virtually anything that will get this health-care bill off the Hill's plate, onto the president's desk, and out of the news. Its haunting presence and incubus-like suffocation of any potential jobs bill are, by this point, only inflating right-wing hopes of a horrifying comeback in 2010.
Plus, Harry Reid and his little gang's compromise on a compromise isn't half bad. True, a public option is out, but it was effectively out, anyway; the government would instead negotiate with private, not-for-profit insurance companies in the construction of a "national exchange"; stronger regulation of private insurance offerings would prevail; and better yet, the revised bill would narrow, by 10 years, Americans' vulnerability gap, in a Medicare "buy-in" scheme.
As initially conceived, the compromise would have also expanded Medicaid (encompassing those with incomes 150 percent -- up from 133 percent -- above the poverty line), but, naturally, Democratic conservatives swiftly nixed that idea, in political alliance with budget-strapped governors.
The Medicare buy-in idea, however -- which, reports the Politico, was "injected" into Senate negotiations by Howard Dean about two weeks ago -- has now heroically survived for ... what ... as of this writing, nearly 12 hours? Bravo, senators. Well done. A sturdy deal, indeed.
Particularly stunning -- in fact, intensely distressing -- was this observation, again, from the Politico: "The turning point in the debate occurred over the past few weeks, as some progressives began to question whether the public option had been watered down too much for it to even be effective."
I've reread that line maybe a half-dozen times, and each time my slow burn accelerated. The past few weeks -- valuable, critical time that was needlessly vaporized in rah-rah-siss-boom-bah political posturing; in many personal cases the Congressional left's monumental version of the shallowest of demagoguery.
Those "some progressives" in Congress knew -- they have known -- for indeed months that a feasible public option was doomed, yet in newspaper and cable-television interviews they visited America daily, assuring all that a vigorous public option there'd be.
I expect that bombastically deceitful behavior from the right; from the left, it's inexcusable.
But, that's politics, as well as irrefutable evidence that the left has no monopoly on political virtue, which in itself, I suppose, is at least a trifle oxymoronic.
So, onward ho with the revised bill and resurrected hope. Maybe. Or maybe not. Because Republican Senator Olympia Snowe has already voiced philosophical doubts about the Medicare buy-in; and from the otherwise 60th vote, the deeply unphilosophical and profoundly opportunistic Joe Lieberman, the word is playfully but ominously vague.
In addition, the usual suspects instantly produced their usual gripes: The Medicare proposal has "many of the same problems," said, for instance, Sen. Kent Conrad, that "I have with previous versions of the [robust] public option" -- meaning he fears, genuinely or not, for his state's hospital reimbursements.
That prompted this delightful response from Sen. Jay Rockefeller: "I am really very tired of hearing about that from him. It is always about North Dakota. It is never about any other parts of the country. That is what we are trying to do, the best thing for the country."
Well, perhaps not "the best," which would entail a profit-gutting, single-payer system. But, for now, the doable will do. Good luck, Jay.
Please respond to P.M.'s commentary by leaving comments below and sharing them with the BuzzFlash community. For personal questions or comments you can contact him at fifthcolumnistmail@gmail.com
THE FIFTH COLUMNIST by P.M. Carpenter
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