In (Kinda) Defense of BaucusCare

Why does wadcity have to be so much smarter than me:

Many, like Ezra Klein, have done a great job pointing out some of the major flaws in Baucus’s Bill, but I am really glad that Ron Brownstein at The Atlantic penned this long post of some of it’s upsides.

I think it is telling, and worrisome, that both liberals and conservatives have become so knee-jerk about health care reform — it’s either totally not worth doing unless there’s a public plan or it’s totally not worth doing if any illegal immigrant ever gets anything out of it.

I was angry at Obama for giving up on the public option, but once I got past the political symbolism of it and started to read more about all of the other moving pieces, I began to come around to Obama’s perspective that it’s not the only thing that matters. And what I’ve seen out of the Baucus plan (reading stuff on the right, left, and middle) is that it gets a lot of the other things right.

Media coverage of health care in general has been just atrocious, with the media simply running a he-said-she-said on whatever issue the GOP is running on their daily complaint sheet, and coverage of the Baucus Bill is no different. There is almost no real discussion of the hard-to-follow innards and I shouldn’t have to work so hard to find reasoned analysis of it. I keep hearing it being referred to as a “moderate” Bill written by an insurance industry lackie when the subtler reality is that it reflects an honest effort to expand coverage in as fiscally conservative way as possible.

It has some major problems because it routinely falls on the side of corporate priorities rather than on the goal of expanded coverage, but considering that the primary issue w/ health care in this country is financial, it’s not a bad place to start. There’s a lot not to like in this Bill (not that I’ve read it myself, mind you), but it seems there are some things to like, and that the months it took to put it together reflect an honest effort to really hash out important details.

I don’t know whether Obama wanted to start from the center because he thought he could win some GOP support before the issue became too divisive (that is, the push to get it done in July) or because he felt that if he started too far to the left, he’d doom the process from getting off the ground anyway. But this is where we are. It’s a reasonable Bill, and if it can get some important tweaks, it’s OK by me.

I think the important thing now is for Dems to pursue a two-prong strategy: (1) Start pushing the Bill to the left and start fixing it’s biggest problems, and (2) Make a stronger case that GOP complaints are excuses — they’re looking for reasons not to achieve reform. It’s clear that the GOP’s position is sort of a rope a dope approach wherein they delay and delay and delay, finding one thing after another to take issue with (public option, illegal immigrants, individual mandate, etc), until support withers and the thing won’t pass at all. Republicans who *want* to vote for it need to look like they’re standing up to a backwards-ass Party of No to cross the aisle, and Dems need to make the case that this is what’s going on.

This is why the attacks on the Baucus Bill from the left and the right will ultimately serve to strengthen it. The more “nobody” likes it, ironically, the more the American people might see it as a legitimate compromise and as a more reasonable middle-ground. And if some moderate Dems can make that case (while Pelosi serves an important role of pushing it to the left), the GOP might be better pinned down to vote for it or look like they’re not serious about reform at all. And that’s how something passes.

Not sure if I entirely agree, but Mike makes some important points about the political realities here.

Most of the stuff that pisses me off the most seems custom-designed to keep the big bad bullies that killed Clintoncare (mainly) on the sidelines. The question is whether political sophistication will be enough… or whether taking a strong, deliberate and uncompromising stand on healthcare would be a better response to the incoherent opposition from the Teabaggers on the right.

I know what I’d say.