Despite all the gloom and doom, losing the Massachusetts Senate seat could provide liberals an enormously opportune opening to add the single payer or Medicare buy-in options back to health care reform legislation and pass it.
That is, if Obama really does want a single payer or Medicare-like option, as he claimed over and over and over...
Follow my reasoning:
- If Republicans win Ted Kennedy's Senate seat tomorrow, Democrats' vaunted 60-seat super-majority is gone.
- As a result, no amount of intra-party compromising with DINOs Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu, and the like will allow Democrats alone to overcome Republican attempts to filibuster bills.
- However, urgent bills can be passed via the reconciliation process, which requires only a simple majority of 51 votes.
- If Obama further dilutes the Senate health bill by compromising for Republican votes, he risks losing dozens of House votes for the final, integrated bill.
- Logically, since Obama no longer needs to dilute the bill for the DINOs, he is free to add back liberal reforms that will retain only 51 Senate votes, not 60 votes.
- Thus, the Senate bill would become closer to the more liberal House bill, which includes a single payer option.
The bottom line is this: If Martha Coakley loses the Massachusetts Senate election tomorrow, Obama no longer needs to contort like an ideological pretzel to please the "centrist" Democrats who, via bribes and threats, diluted what Obama has long-claimed to support: a single payer or Medicare buy-in option.
Fifty-one Democratic senators will definitely vote in support of health care reform similar to the more liberal House bill. And Speaker Pelosi will easily hold together a House majority to pass health care reform with a single payer or Medicare option.
Passage of health care reform that includes a single payer or Medicare buy-in option will finally place a controlling lid on exorbitant prices that profit-hungry, bonus-greedy private insurers can charge Americans.
And, without doubt, angrily dispirited Democrats, such as those in blue-state Massachusetts, will return to the Obama fold, reenergized and ready to support his agenda again in the 2010 mid-term elections.
Oddly, Democratic loss of the Massachusetts Senate seat could free Obama from the tyranny of having to attract votes from all 60 Senate Democrats and Independents. And would free Obama to more easily enact the agenda he campaigned on. The choice, of course, would be President Obama's.
But I wonder: Is that what President Obama really wants?
Or would Obama rather continue to feign as hapless victim while moving his agenda to the mediocre middle? My advice? We'll know by his actions, not by his golden, soaring promises.
- Essential Reading
- In 2010, Judge Obama by His Actions, Not Eloquent Words
- Narrowing MA Senate Race Shows Damage to Democratic Brand
(Photo of Obama and Coakley taken on Jan 17, 2010: Darren McCollester/Getty Images)
Comments
Attractive analysis, if only. And tyranny is right.
The problem with your argument is that reconciliation is for budget items only. A single payer program is not a budget item. For the same reason, an end to pre-exisitng conditions cannot pass by reconciliation.
I think Dave is correct. Rules governing reconciliation are in place thanks to Senator Byrd. If budget issues are on the table the only way around them is by parliamentary manipulation.
I found this with a quick search…
“Our guess is that health care reform dies. While it is always possible that a compromise piece of legislation could be worked out that would win some Republican support or Democrats could attempt to ramrod through a bill that overrules the parliamentarian, either possibility seems unlikely.
“Another possibility would be for the Democratic caucus to try to move on the bill quickly, before a victorious Brown could be sworn into office. But we doubt Harry Reid can muster 60 votes for a sneaky move like that. Too many Democrats would fear public backlash.
“In any case, it would be quite something if the crucial decisions about the shape of American health care were made not by the president or any other elected representative, but by an expert inrules that almost no one has ever heard of. Then again, who would have ever guessed that so much would turn on a special election to replace an incredibly popular liberal Senator?
“Ain’t democracy grand?”
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-does-reconciliation-work-in-congress-2010-1
I rather like that part about a quick move before Brown gets sworn in.
Oh, well…
Maybe when our kids have had enough they will try it again. If they don’t go broke or get sick and die first.
Good research John. I think the only hope for healthcare if Brown wins is for the House to pass the Senate bill unamended.
Yep.
Or amended to include vouchers for ponies only good after 2014.
Two long discussion threads at my Facebook on this post. Per a Google search, I am not the only Democrat who has arrived at this possible scenario. Here are a few:
Per Rep. Chris Van Hollen in a Bloomberg interview: “Even before Massachusetts and that race was on the radar screen, we prepared for the process of using reconciliation. Getting health-care reform passed is important. … Reconciliation is an option.”
http://rawstory.com/2010/01/dem-coakley-loses-health-reforms-pass-reconciliation/
David Sirota:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sirota/dems-inadvertently-sugges_b_426922.html
Speaker Pelosi has apparently made remarks this evening, too, that health care reform will pass, with or without the MA Senate seat. I will have to read her analysis a bit later.
Just found this Christian Science Monitor article posted this afternoon:
Three ways healthcare reform could pass even if Coakley loses
http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20100118/ts_csm/274460
Thanks, Deborah.
Underscoring the need for reform, I just heard a story on the radio about a dying woman. As I was listening with half an ear this line jumped out at me:
“…her insurance company told her she’d exhausted her hospice benefit…”
Am I alone in thinking that there is something wrong with this picture?
An insurance company can tell a dying person their “benefits” are “exhausted” BEFORE THEY MEET THE ANGEL OF DEATH!
WTF?!
The word “beneficiary” should be changed to “victim.”
For that matter the word “insurance” is misleading. They should try some other term picked up from the casino business.
Sheesh….
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122706192
I hope this healthINSURANCE bill doesn’t pass! This would be a good thing. Voters need to be heard, not the health insurance lobby. Why should we pass “reform” that subsidizes the health insurance companies whose markup on healthcare is 35%??
Patty, please excuse my knee-jerk reaction to the radio and don’t misinterpret my comment.
Reality is that the bill would make it illegal for insurance companies to put limits like that in place, as well as stop the unconscionable practice of dropping people for getting sick. (I suppose the property people will continue to follow the dictum “Use it AND lose it” but that can no longer be the case under the proposed legislation.)
As for the 35% part, I think the Senate bill requires that 80% of premium dollars be used only for payment of claims, which leaves 20 cents on the dollar for administrative, advertising and other expenses.
The true escallating costs of health care still will come from providers and users more than insurance companies.
I just have a really bad attitude about insurance companies.