lilburro has a great catch:

Ezra [Klein] favors incrementalism vis a vis the Baucus plan because it sets up a call center:

The emphasis here, however, is on making them easy to use: "The exchange will provide a standardized enrollment application, a standard format for describing insurance options and marketing, call center support and customer service." It's not clear why you'd do all that if you weren't planning to let them expand.

So whereas enrolling 10 million people is meaningless, setting up a call center is a monumental gain in health care reform destined to bring us to universal health care. WTF???!!

(Emphasis supplied.) My question is will the call centers be multi-lingual? I mean, since illegal aliens are sure to be using the "exchanges," we need to make sure there is a Spanish speaking option at least. Without it, the "expansion" seems doubtful . . .

Speaking for me only

Ezra Klein writes:

This will not be a popular post, I fear. But one of the themes I'm seeing in a lot of the commentary is that the absence of a public plan is essentially equivalent to the absence of cost control, and the presence of a public plan is pretty much the presence of cost control. For the public plans on the table, that's not true, at least not in any way I can see. . . . The strongest public plan on offer is in the bill being considered by the House of Representatives. . . . The vast majority of Americans would be ineligible for the public plan, even if they wanted it. The CBO estimates that by 2019, the public plan would have a likely enrollment of 10 million Americans . . . The end result is that the public plan is unlikely to have a very large customer base, which means it will be unable to use market share to bargain prices far lower than private insurers.

So, Ezra argues, the public option is badly flawed because it is too incrementalist (and implicitly, not an important part of health care reform.) Of course, Ezra can not imagine the public option being expanded later. But Ezra is not usually so skeptical of potential expansion of health care reform initiatives in the future. When it is an initiative he likes, Ezra is gung ho for incrementalism:

As longs as the Progressive Block holds, no health care reform bill without a public option will pass the House. But with Mike Ross' "shocking" opposition to the public option, the question came to me - what Democrats are against the public option in the House (of course all Republicans will oppose any health care reform bill). The Hill provides this handy dandy list of the 23 who have announced their opposition:

John Adler (N.J.), Jason Altmire (Pa.), John Barrow (Ga.), Dan Boren (Okla.) Rick Boucher (Va.), Allen Boyd (Fla.), Bobby Bright (Ala.), Travis Childers (Miss.), Jim Costa (Calif.), Henry Cuellar (Texas), Parker Griffith (Ala.), Frank Kratovil (Md.), Betsy Markey (Colo.) Eric Massa (N.Y.), Jim Matheson (Utah), Charlie Melancon (La.), Walt Minnick (Idaho), Tom Perriello (Va.), Earl Pomeroy (N.D.), Heath Shuler (N.C.), Bart Stupak (Mich.), John Tanner (Tenn.), Gene Taylor (Miss.)

As you can see, of the 23, 16 are from the South or other Deep Red states. They were always nos, and nos to any health care reform. Who are the other 7? Let's discuss them on the flip.

While this is not surprising, it is worth noting. Via Steve Benen:

Key Blue Dog Democratic Rep. Mike Ross (Ark.) [said] "[a] government-run public option is the wrong direction for health reform in this country and I will oppose it in the U.S. Congress[.]"

Benen goes on to detail Ross' negotiation with Henry Waxman on the issue and the fact that Ross actually has already voted for a public option. But no one who was thinking could believe he would vote for it in a final bill. But the larger point should be made - Mike Ross opposes Medicare.

Speaking for me only

The accomodationist wing of the "progressive blogosphere" has nice things to say about the Baucus proposal. Ezra Klein writes:

It'll be hard to say anything definitive on the Baucus proposal before we can see all the details. At the moment, Politico has the clearest rundown of what people think they know is in the plan. But in advance of the president's speech on Wednesday, we do seem to know Baucus's most crucial contribution to the debate: the number $900 billion. . . [T]hough it's less than one might hope, it's a lot more than many were beginning to fear. . . . The number I'd begun to hear was $700 billion.

My gawd. Did Ezra miss the stimulus bill sausage making? Set aside the basic flaw in the Baucus proposal - it has jettisoned the idea of competition from a public plan (the only part of reform that I think can work, I do not believe the US regulatory state can efficiently regulate the insurance industry). Even from Ezra's accomodationist perspective, he must know there is no way in hell the $900 billion number (btw, a large chunk of that comes from Medicare "savings") survives. Meanwhile Matt Yglesias incredibly compares the Baucus proposal to the Switzerland system. That defies belief.

Speaking for me only

Steve Benen writes:

Republicans aren't looking for concessions; they're looking to kill the legislation. . . . It's hard not to be impressed with these negotiations. Dems say, "How about a public option that would offer consumers a choice, and lower prices through competition?" Republicans reply, "No." Dems say, "OK, how about a system of non-profit co-ops"? Republicans reply, "No." Dems say, "How about a trigger, which would bring added competition to the system if private insurers fail to meet certain benchmarks?" Republicans reply, "No."

Anyone with a brain knew this. But here's the question, why do we need Olympia Snowe's vote? Steve writes "It's one thing to entertain the idea of a trigger to bring Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) into the fold[.]" Wait up, why do we need her in the fold? What do we get substantively for having Snowe in the fold? Can someone explain to me why Dems are even talking to her? There will be 60 Dem votes in the Senate soon enough (when MA replaces Ted Kennedy.) So why do we care about Olympia Snowe? What does she bring to the table? And at what cost?

It would be somewhat funny (in a tragic way) if Snowe goes for a public option but extracts the price of stripping out all the subsidies Ezra Klein loves so much. That would be damned ironic. All of Ezra Klein's deal breakers could become the bargaining chip for the public option. I wonder how he would feel about that? But that might be what is at stake if the fetishization of Olympia Snowe continues.

Speaking for me only

NYTimes on the Baucus health care plan:

People familiar with Mr. Baucus’s plan said it was calculated to appeal to Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine. . . .

Mr. Baucus’s plan . . . would tax insurance companies on their most expensive health care policies. . . . Another section of Mr. Baucus’s proposal would help pay insurance premiums, co-payments and deductibles for people with incomes less than 300 percent of the poverty level . . . Mr. Baucus’s proposal does not include a “trigger mechanism” [or a public plan.] Coverage under Mr. Baucus’s plan would, by some measures, be less extensive than the least generous of three levels envisioned in a bill approved by three House committees.

In short, "competition" is not included in the Baucus proposal. President Obama's supposed insistence on "competition" is not a Baucus concern. Apparently, only President Snowe is Baucus's concern. This seems a pretty clumsy non-starter at first blush and not really helpful on any front. Time will tell.

Speaking for me only

[This is not a post about Afghanistan.]

Politics is the art of the possible. We all understand that. So on health care reform, what are we (as opposed to the pols) fighting for? In my view, we are now fighting for the most progressive health care bill that can get 218 votes in the House and 50 votes in the Senate (a later separate bill can be fashioned that gets 60 votes in the Senate to take care of Ezra Klein's concerns.) To get that, we have to demand much more than that now. And our "negotiators," the Progressive Block, have to be tactically extreme in this process.

But pols, even the Progressive Block pols, are not fighting for that. They fight for their own personal agendas - getting reelected, expanding their political power, etc. John Aravosis writes about the political skin the President has in the game now:

Via Media Matters, after of course saying the preference is for a "bipartisan bill," Tom Daschle said that health care reform can not be held hostage to the process and endorsed the use of reconciliation for health care reform:

Daschle is not nobody in the Obama circle. To me this is a message to Ben Nelson in particular. I think he got it too. On CNN, Nelson was talking about a public option trigger. Of course, to me the Progressive Block should continue their "tactical extremism" on a robust public option. It is working. Maybe they can save Ezra Klein's deal breakers along the way.

Speaking for me only

Digby gets it right:

According to Mike Viqueira on MSNBC, Obama told the progressives in congress on a conference call this morning that on health care, they need to worry about their fellow members in districts that voted with McCain in '08. I guess he figures that those conservative districts are going to be appeased by some sort of "trigger" or a plan without the public option and that those guys in tough districts will be rewarded for making that happen.

I think that's about as delusional as the teabaggers, frankly. If those McCain voters are upset about health care reform, the only thing that will appease them is total defeat. . . .

Yep. This is obvious. The strategy actually requires letting those Blue Dogs run as Republicans who can brag about stopping "death panels." Personally, I think this is disastrous for the Blue Dogs politically (and coincidentally Obama) also. For some reason, base intensity is a political concept not understood in the Beltway.

Speaking for me only

The DNC is going to run the above ad on cable stations and in Washington, DC, pointing out that it's Republicans who are opposed to Medicare -- and always have been.

The rare capitulation Ezra Klein won't support has been discovered:

I'm firmly on the record as being willing to support all manner of compromises [BTD: no sh*t] on health-care reform. Policy dogmatism has not, over the long history of this issue, proven a successful strategy. But there's an increasingly evident path by which health-care reform begins to hurt the very people it's meant to aid. As Jordan Rau reports, making health-care reform affordable for the centrists in the Congress could make it unaffordable for the people.

The funny thing is Ezra sees no correlation between his urging of capitulation on health care reform and the inevitable capitulation on the parts of the bill he cares about. If it was not so sad, it would be hilarious.

Speaking for me only