I've been watching the health wonks scramble to figure out the latest tentative Senate compromise on the health-care reform bill. And I have to say, wow. If the reporting is correct, the last six months have taken us from letting three or four million people buy into a public health insurance option -- a technocratic, public-private scheme that uses market incentives to save money -- to allowing approximately three million people to buy-in to Medicare, a rock-solid heirloom of Great Society liberalism. And this comes with a (weak) public option trigger!
Is this some kind of Obama jujitsu? Liberals have spent months trying to sell the Senate's moderates on this '90s-style centrist scheme and the moderates have responded, naw, we'll take the Lyndon Johnson version. Should liberals pretend to hate it -- and, given my druthers, I would probably prefer the public option! -- so that the moderates don't figure out what they've done? It's safe to say that of the two options that could (but probably won't) lead to a single-payer system, Medicare expansion is a much bigger step than the public option. Of course, that's what happens when you fetishize ignorance -- eventually, you get so confused you're liable to sign on to something worthwhile. And now, we await the CBO.
-- Tim Fernholz
