Summary
Nothing has raised the hackles of partisan Democrats and especially Republicans more this year than the public health insurance option. On the left, liberals consider it to be the indispensable component of true healthcare reform. On the right, conservatives refer to it to the first step on the slippery slope to socialism, if not a return to the Third Reich this time in America. Yet, the truth is that its impact will likely be so small, its presence (or absence) hardly merits any debate.
Analysis
Even the considerably more robust public option plan which just barely squeaked by the much more liberal U.S. House of Representatives a couple of weeks ago will likely only attract about 6 million people, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) which has become the closest thing to the final word in Washington on whether any health care reform bill goes forward or not. The just introduced compromise bill in the U.S. Senate, despite all the press about retaining a public option, because of its "opt out" provision and other diluted features to attract moderate Democrats (or at least not repel them) makes it unlikely that it will attract more than 4 million subscribers.
Neither of these likely scenarios is hardly the government takeover of health care which has been the most trumped up and inaccurate charge put forth by the private insurance lobby using conservative talk show hosts (Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, et. al.) as their not so thinly veiled (and very loud) mouthpiece. The "principled" threat by so-callled independent Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) to vote with the Republicans against any bill with even so diluted a public option which currently appears in the compromise Senate bill is, in reality, an almost laughingly transparent sellout to the health insurers which still drive much of his state's economic fortunes. This, after the Democratic Party was so kind to Senator Lieberman, giving him the Chair of the Senate's important Homeland Security Committee, even after so strongly supporting his buddy Senator McCain over then Senator Obama in last year's Presidential Election.
This bill needs all Democratic Senators (plus Senator Lieberman and another Independent) to be brought to a full debate in the Senate immediately after the Thanksgiving break. There may be (and probably need to be) many amendments to the current Senate bill before it comes up for a final up or down vote some time next month. However, whether or not this bill retains this very diluted public option should definitely not be the misguided pretext for failing to have that debate at all.
