blogger interrupted

So this week’s media driven story looks like the death of the public option for health care reform.  I find it fascinating that the response to a bunch of hysterical raving from the hard right about death panels, Stalin, and swastika logos is to gut the number one aspect of reform that makes me interested in buying health insurance, but well, that’s our system working its magic!

Howard Dean was just on Morning Joe suggesting it’s not dead at all – that the Senate bill without a public option will have to be reconciled with a House bill including a public option, and that the resulting bill with a public option will be passed via reconciliation, thus only requiring 50 Senate votes.  I guess that could work.  However, even if this legislative sausage making doesn’t get a public option into the final bill, I don’t think it’s the end of the world.

Look, change is hard.  Real change, big change, like allowing every American the opportunity to buy into a Medicare like federal insurance program, is even harder.  It takes time.  It takes long term political momentum.  One way that momentum builds is through elections.  If the public option doesn’t happen in this bill, it will be a campaign issue in 2010 for Democrats, even in primary challenges.  And frankly, I’d love to run for Congress on that issue alone.

Every Republican congressional candidate in the country will have to defend why their party took away from Americans the opportunity to buy into a Medicare-style program, and left them at the hands of insurance company roulette.  I don’t see a good response to that attack.  This teabagger hysteria may work to get the media lathered up for a 24 hour cable TV cycle, but it ain’t gonna work with voters in November, 2010.

In Ohio, that means Rob Portman has a problem.  If I’m Jennifer Brunner, I’m licking my chops at the prospect of hammering Portman on this.  It’ll be tricky to get precisely the right attack line, but given that polling has suggested the American people consistently support a public option, it’s there for the taking.

And long term, the public option is inevitable, especially after the re-election of Barack Obama.  You simply will not get the cost control, nor the consumer protection, that is required without it.  This will be revisited, and it will likely happen, if not now, in Barack’s second term.  It makes too much sense.  And I don’t mind having it as an election issue next year.