You’re going to have to color me confused by all the attention given to the Senate Finance Committee and the “Gang of Six” that supposedly hold the future of health insurance reform in their hands. Why is there all this emphasis on this particular committee’s bill? Four of the five committees working on the bills have already released their marked-up versions, all four of these contain the public option. In fact, the “Gang of Six” – Enzi (R-WY), Grassley (R-IA), Snowe (R-ME), Bingaman (D-NM), Conrad (D-ND) and Baucus (D-MT) represent <3% of the U.S. population. Why do they get to decide what health care the rest of the 97% of the U.S. gets? Why is the public option supposedly in jeopardy? The short answer is that I don't really think that the public option is in serious jeopardy. I know Rahm Emmanuel and President Obama understand that Republicans have decided they want to kill the bill, no matter what. I believe they want it to be crystal clear that it's Republicans that are doing this and not the Democrats. I think they also know that in the long run it doesn't matter how many votes the bill got, if it's popular no one will care. The Democrats' governing majority relies on the success of this bill. If it fails, it proves that even large Democratic majorities can't get things done. Most people don't care who voted for it or against it, they want a good bill and they are going to hold Democrats accountable. That's what I believe. I think this year's "Summer of Spittle" (h/t Jason330 and Liberal Geek) is similar to 2001's "Summer of the Shark." It's a lot of heat and light but not really important to the end game. I really think the only thing it's done is hardened GOP opposition but they were pretty committed to the status quo already. The media loves a good conflict story, because the details require much more work while he said/she said is easy. What I think will happen is that the Democrats will end up splitting the bill and passing the new regulations overcoming a filibuster and will pass the public option and ways to pay for it through reconciliation. Budget reconciliation is a process story, so frankly, most people don't really care. Only political junkies really pay close attention to the political process. In fact, we only need 50 senators to pass a public option if we really deem it necessary. Chris Bowers at Open Left lays out the process:
The reason I am going to side with August 5th Matthew Yglesias on this one is that he was right. The fact is that Democrats only need 50 votes, plus the Vice-President, to sustain a ruling from the Senate chair that health care reform legislation with a public option can be passed with only 51 votes. This is the case even if the Senate Parliamentarian disagrees.
The only objection to this is political, not substantive. It can be argued that pushing health care reform with a public option through reconciliation is a bad idea politically. However, it cannot be accurately argued that it is impossible to do so. After all, if 50 Senate Democrats plus Vice-President Biden wanted to do so, they could actually eliminate the filibuster altogether, much less get around it only for health care reform legislation.
If they want to, Democrats can pass health care reform with a public option through the Senate with only 50 votes plus Vice-President Biden. If reconciliation is not used, it is because Senate Democrats decided Senate process is more important than a public option, not because Senate Democrats were forced into abandoning the public option by Senate process.
In the end, it’s important to get majority support for the public option and Rep. Waxman is already laying some groundwork to embarrass politicians who seem to be giving insurance companies a big gift (personal health care mandate + no public option = big gift to insurance companies). There are people on our side who understand the stakes and will work very hard (and fight dirty if they need to) to get this done. That is my hope, anyway.