I need some help with the current state of health care reform. It seems to me that passing a bill with a public option - that is, making a government-run health insurance plan available to all Americans - is in serious danger of being killed entirely in the name of bipartisanship. That's bipartisanship, DC style, which as we all know means "everyone does what right wing extremists in the GOP want."
Anyway, there's simply no reason to pass any health care legislation at all without creating a public option, because that's the only actual reform which has been proposed. Everything else that might happen will, at best, be a case of nibbling at the edges, and will prove incredibly easy for insurance companies to circumvent.
So if Congressional Democrats don't write a bill with a public option - and if President Obama doesn't use his political capital with the public to force them into it - anything they do pass will become a failure. Health insurance will continue to get more expensive, millions of Americans will still go without any health insurance at all, and the deficit will continue to expand. And most importantly, all of this will be blamed on President Obama and Congressional Democrats, because they're the ones in charge.
Do I have it right? Or is there some sort of political jujitsu going on that people who aren't "in the know" can't see
