Charles Blow:

Maybe Obama was wise to hang back. While anger can simmer forever, overheated outrage is exhausting and ultimately counterproductive. Anyone familiar with Aesop’s fable “The Tortoise and the Hare” surely remembers this lesson: slow and steady wins the race. I was beginning to think of Obama as the hare, but maybe he’s the tortoise.

Instead of 11 dimensional chess, Blow posits, Obama was playing rope a dope. Whatever. In any event, can we all agree that if that is how President Obama plans to "lead," then it is imperative that we have a strong, vibrant and VOCAL progressive Caucus (in the House and if possible, in the Senate) and movement to push the debate in the proper direction (where would the health care reform debate be if not for the Progressive Caucus and Senators like Jay Rockefeller and Sherrod Brown?) Can we dispense with the "Don't Worry, He's Got It" nonsense? Clearly, if Obama is going to use an Accidental President approach, he's going to need policy driven by progressive elements in the other branches of government (think about Gitmo detainees and habeas petitions.) If this is Obama's approach, it DEMANDS a loud and vocal progressive pushback on every issue (even the ones I disagree with progressives on, such as Afghanistan and free trade.) It is imperative that the Progressive Caucus become a force to be reckoned with.

Speaking for me only

As the person who coined the phrase "11 dimensional chess," I take exception to Booman's post that, due to his misunderstanding of its origin and meaning, criticizes the phrase. Moreover, Booman misunderstands the process by which the public option remains alive. Booman writes:

I, too, have been irritated with the growing currency of the derisive term 11-Dimensional Chess. The term is used to dismiss the possibility that there is a rhyme and reason behind Obama's strategies (particularly on health care). . . . I know that most people using the term mean something slightly different.

(Emphasis supplied.) More . . .

HuffPo:

A memo making the rounds on Capitol Hill makes the case that the current construct of the Senate Finance Committee's legislation - which includes an individual mandate but no public option - will be resoundingly opposed by the American public.

"Nationally," the memo reads, "voters oppose a mandate to purchase private insurance by 64% to 34% but support a mandate with a choice of private or public insurance by 60% to 37%... Each [survey] found that likely 2010 voters oppose 'requiring everyone to buy and be covered by a private health insurance plan' but support 'requiring everyone to buy and be covered by a health insurance plan with a choice between a public option and private insurance plans.'"

No problem. They can all get jobs as lobbyists when they are voted out.

Speaking for me only

While Kent Conrad opposes the public option because, he says, it does not fit "our culture," 65% of Americans disagree with Conrad:

Would you favor or oppose the government offering everyone a government administered health insurance plan -- something like the Medicare coverage that people 65 and older get -- that would compete with private health insurance plans?"

Favor 65%, Oppose 26%

Of course, being a "deficit hawk," Conrad and Blue Dogs are having a hard time explaining why they oppose the one proposal that actually WOULD REDUCE the budget deficit by $110 billion AND is supported by 65% of Americans.

More and more, ConservaDems and Blue Dogs are being unmasked as nothing but lackeys for the insurance industry. Nothing else explains their behavior.

Speaking for me only

For the benefit of ConservaDems and Blue Dogs, let's review the bidding on cost controls and deficit reduction in the various health care reform proposals:

(1) Conrad's Co-ops Are Useless.

(2) Wyden's Exchanges Are Useless.

(3) Robust Public Option Saves $110 Billion.

Who are the deficit hawks again?

If ConservaDems and Blue Dogs really are into cost controls as they claim, and are really worried about budget deficits as they claim, then they should demand a public option. Via FDL, the LATimes reports:

[Congress'] reluctance to control premium costs comes despite the fact that they intend to require virtually all Americans to get health insurance, an unprecedented mandate -- long sought by insurance companies -- that would mark the first time the federal government has compelled consumers to buy a single industry's product, effectively creating a captive market. "We are about to force at least 30 million people into an insurance market where the sharks are circling," said California Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, a Democrat who served as the state's insurance commissioner for eight years. "Without effective protections, they will be eaten alive."

Soaring premiums coupled with millions of new customers forced to buy policies would likely mean higher costs for taxpayers to cover government subsidies for lower-income families and individuals. They could also mean bigger bills for people who get benefits.

(Emphasis supplied.) How's that for a campaign theme in 2010 - "Vote Dem - We Made Sure Insurance Companies Screw You."

Speaking for me only

Here's a shocker - Ezra Klein gets Kent Conrad to admit he opposes government run health insurance programs like Medicare:

[KLEIN:]Do you support the public option?

[CONRAD:] No. [. . .] I don't think a government-run plan best fits this culture. A plan that's not government-run has the best chance of succeeding in being passed into law. [. . .] [T]he public option as defined by the committee of jurisdiction in the House, the Ways and Means Committee, is tied to Medicare levels of reimbursement. [. . .] If my state is tied to that reimbursement, every hospital goes broke.

The solution seems obvious to me - North Dakota should be exempted from Medicare and all government run health insurance programs.

Speaking for me only

Ryan Grim:

The Blue Dogs have been surveying their membership over the last several days; coalition co-chair Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-S.D.) has been collecting the responses. She listed the four top priorities that have emerged: Keeping the cost under $900 billion, not moving at a faster pace than the Senate, getting a 20-year cost estimate from the Congressional Budget Office and addressing regional disparities in Medicare reimbursement rates. So, the Huffington Post asked, the public option is not a top priority? "Right, the group is somewhat split," she said.

Good news. Now, to the fight to insure it is a robust public option continues. Grim has more info on that at the link.

Speaking for me only

Via FDL, The Hill reports:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday shot down a healthcare compromise that has been viewed as the best chance for getting a bipartisan bill through the Senate. . . . “I don't even want to talk about a trigger,” Pelosi said at her weekly press conference. She said the “attitude” of her fellow Democrats is that “a trigger is an excuse for not doing anything.”

Well done Madam Speaker.

Speaking for me only

Via Bowers, this:

Many centrists credit Rahm Emanuel, now White House chief of staff, then a congressman from Illinois and a member of leadership, for pushing Pelosi to protect vulnerable members. “Rahm could say, ‘Nance, I’m the guy who delivered the House.’ He had a special ability to talk to her,” said a senior Democratic aide.

Leaving aside the lie behind the Rahmbo propaganda (Rahmbo got it all wrong in 2006, not wanting to run against the Iraq Debacle. Dems won despite him, not because of him), what this tells me is that Rahm has leverage with Blue Dogs, not the Progressive Caucus. He means nothing to them. Rahm seems to recognize this:

Ezra Klein:

Medicare Advantage is a Medicare carve-out that allows private insurers to offer plans for seniors. The original vision for the program was simple enough: Private competition will drive costs down. The private market, as you may have heard, is more efficient and effective and adaptable. No reason seniors shouldn't benefit from that ingenuity. So Medicare would give private insurers the money it would spend on a beneficiary, and the private insurers could try to do a better job with it. Medicare Advantage, however, failed in its mission: prices shot up. Private insurers complained that they couldn't compete with Medicare for the same amount of money Medicare spends.

(Emphasis supplied.) And yet, Ezra tells us that exchanges, the private market, will be the magic wand that fixes health care. Which makes this line from Ezra ironic -- "faced with an instance where the government program proved relatively lean and efficient, and the private market expensive and wasteful, Republicans have mounted a ferocious defense of the market's right to continue burning through taxpayer dollars." Ezra's insistence that an exchange with a mandate without a public option is the magic bullet for health care reform is pretty much what he is criticizing Republicans for on Medicare Advantage.

Speaking for me only

The JournOList campaign against Howard Dean, the public option and reconciliation, got me to thinking - what exactly do they consider an acceptable health care bill? From what I can gather, they are insistent on 2 provisions only (though of course they "support" many others)- mandates and exchanges. To get those two provisions, they seem prepared to sacrifice everything else. Would that really be a progressive achievement? I do not think so. Some other people agree with me. Via digby, Gene Lyons writes:

[JournOLister Jon] Chait, however, also thinks progressives should shut up and accept a deeply flawed bill. . . . Baucus' bill would force millions of working Americans currently without coverage to spend up to 13 percent of their annual income on private health insurance policies they can't afford.

Digby writes "They seem intent upon taking what should be an historic progressive achievement and turning it into a hated, regressive tax on their own constituents." It was that line that got me to thinking about what Bill Clinton, with less of a mandate and a much less progressive Congress, accomplished in 1993. Let's compare on the flip.