The Long Road to Democracy - Best Analysis Yet: The Status Quo Wins in Health-Care Reform

Ezra Klein, Wash. Post, 10/02 did a great job analyzing the outcome of the Baucus committee's health care horror show. It is to be commended.

Baucus and Conrad play a dirty trick to kill a last vote on the public option.

…the drama came late in the evening. About one in the morning, Wyden's Free Choice Act came before the committee. But it never came up for a vote.

Instead, Max Baucus effectively ruled it out of order. The reason? It didn't have a full CBO score. This came as a surprise to Wyden and his team, who'd gotten the amendment scored by the CBO, and had been in endless negotiations with Baucus, the White House, employers, and labor over the past week. If the score was in fact partial, as Baucus and Conrad claimed, you'd think someone might have mentioned it. No one did.

But suddenly, in the wee hours of Friday morning, the chairs of the Finance and Budget Committees were explaining that the amendment lacked a valid score. An an amendment without a valid score is "out of order." Wyden was left with little choice but to withdraw the amendment. It was not deliberative democracy at its finest. But it served its purpose: it killed the amendment.

There's no free choice among health plans, as Congress has, for very good reasons that should have been anticipated but were not.

If the Free Choice Act had passed, politicians could have made a very simple argument to the insured: When this bill becomes law, you will have insurance choices just like those enjoyed by a member of Congress or a government employee. You will have a variety of insurers competing for your business and the opportunity to keep the same insurance even as you change jobs, or fall unemployed, or open your own business. You don't have to take advantage of this if you don't want to. You can stick with what your employer offers. But if you do want the choice, you can have it. It's here for you. That's what reform means, for everyone: choices, competition and continuity.
But it turns out not to mean that. The proposal was doomed by the joint opposition of businesses and labor. Businesses didn't like it because they lose control over their employees' health benefits. Labor groups didn't like it because they lose control over their members' health benefits. That's not an entirely selfish concern: It is easier to bargain on behalf of your workers or members if they have no other options, and thus are guaranteed customers for the insurer.

So there's a bill that will pass. We'll know it does no good since it's a binary evaluation, either my health care is affordable and decent or it's no different. They'll know since people will be furious that we're at the tipping point of access to care and affordability and the "60 vote" myth is just that, a load of bull shit.