The “public option” and the wheelbarrow parable (Part 2)
By Kip Sullivan JD
It is way past time for “public option” advocates to take a stand either for or against an insurance industry bailout.
Do “option” advocates support the individual mandate in the Democrats’ legislation (a requirement that all uninsured Americans buy health insurance from the bloated insurance industry) and the subsidies that will allegedly make the mandate affordable, even if these provisions are enacted without an “option”? Or do they oppose the mandate and the subsidies if there is no “option” in the final legislation? Does the “robustness” of the “option” have any bearing on their decision, or will any provision with the title “public option” in it suffice to win their support for an insurance industry bailout?
For the last two years, the leaders of the “option” campaign have been extraordinarily vague about what sort of “option” they stand for and whether the “option” is more important to them than an insurance industry bailout...
...These tactics – creating a hullabaloo over a vaguely defined “option” but then supporting bailout legislation that contains no “option” – remind me of an old parable about an employee of a factory who, night after night for many years, left the factory pushing a wheelbarrow filled with straw...
...Even though they had to have known by June 2009 that the “option” in the HELP and tri-committee bills were travesties of Hacker’s original proposal, the “option” campaign pretended otherwise. They called the Democrats’ microscopic “options” “robust” and “strong,” and lavished praise on the bills – bills which contained the bailout provisions so coveted by the insurance industry...
... As health policy, the “public option” was worthless. But as a political tool it was priceless. As the straw distracted attention from the wheelbarrow, so the “option” distracted attention from the fact that the health care “reform” promoted by the “option” campaign will criminalize the uninsured and transfer hundreds of billions of dollars of public funds to private insurance companies.
full essay available at:
http://pnhp.org/blog/2010/03/09/wheelbarrow-parable-part-2/
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