Health Care Town Hall Meeting: Reflections

Make no mistake about it: The primary objection conservatives have to health care reform is the inclusion of a public option. Oh, they make noises about other parts of the proposals and continue to erroneously believe that the path to true reform lies through revoking the right to jury trials in the singular instance of malpractice suits (and yet, they trust juries to hand out the death penalty. Go figure). But conservatives at the town hall meeting saved most of their invective for the possibility of a public option.

A public option simply means the alternative of purchasing health insurance through a government entity. Premiums alone -- and not tax dollars -- would finance the entity. Experts in health care reform believe it necessary not because of the large amounts of people who would choose it -- according to Jay Inslee, the CBO estimates about 3% of Americans would choose the public option -- but to control costs and to provide a competitive alternative to private insurance So why all the ruckus? As Inslee himself said, suppose that it is more than 3%? All that means is that people want it, that they're making the choice of participating in a public option.

As near I can decipher the hoots and jeers, the objections come down to these:

• taxpayer money will eventually be needed to finance a public option, regardless of what anyone says now;
• a public option is the camel's nose in the tent, the camel being socialized medicine along the lines of the Canada, Great Britain, or (shudder) France. Sure we start off with a small public option. But like all government programs, it will grow until it subsumes the entire health care system.

To which I say, if only. We'll have single-payer health care in this country when the political will and momentum exists for it, i.e., when politicians believe that not supporting it will cost them their jobs. Right now, we don't have that. I might argue that the quickest path to single payer is to continue doing nothing: Let the problem fester until radical surgery becomes the only option. However, the human costs of that are too high, so I'll support reform with a public option. Reform without a public option makes a mockery of the word, anyway.

So take the conservative argument as it is: That a public option is the first step to single-payer. So what? If that's what the people of the United States and their elected representatives want, that's what we should have. If conservatives want to avoid all of this supposed catastrophe, all they have to do is become a majority party again. They seem to think that the best way to do that is to Just Say No, in a preferably loud and profane manner. Which leads me to think that they are full of sour grapes and pissed off because they lost and are out of power. Worse (for them), they don't even have a ball to take home.

What Democrats have to realize is that the game is theirs, that it would be nice if the other side played but in the end it doesn't make any difference because the Democrats have already won. So, let's act like it. We don't need Republicans to pass a public option, and it's clear that they won't support any reform that comes from outside of their agenda, whether or not it includes a public option. Quit courting them and get on with what needs to be done...

Just my little piece of the world argues that the public option is far from dead...

If you lived in New Orleans, this weekend you could lose your inhibitions at the Southern Decadence Festival, dance the day away at the Creole Zydeco Festival, chow down at the Louisiana Shrimp & Petroleum Festival, and party green at Project 30-90 (the intersection of sound + sustainability)...

Moments in time: Pablo Picasso poses with a new painting...

(Thanks to Collin Kelley.)