Harry Reid's decisions on health care might have some plausible explanations

[CreekDog]

1) Reconciliation could allow us to fund health care but not regulate the insurance industry. Without such regulation, insurance industry could cherry pick and slough off the sickest and oldest patients onto a public or government funded option. Shoe-horning such regulation into reconciliation could have turned Robert Byrd into an opponent of the legislation.

2) Bills passed using reconciliation sunset after a period of time.

3) All the time spent to get Snowe's vote was precisely because Reid didn't trust Lieberman and her vote would have made his unnecessary.

4) I think some of the delays were so the main fight against health care would be in the summer when few would be watching as closely (that sort of happened).

No, I don't believe in three dimensional chess games. Let's face it, this did not turn out the way we wanted it to. Yet understanding the choices Reid was facing, I can understand why given the crappy set of choices he had before him, that he chose the ones he did. Also, knowing what those choices were (as well as their plausible alternatives) helps me understand how someone could be trying to create a good bill, yet make the moves that he did.

I do have one criticism though (and I extend it to the administration too):

Most of these decisions assume these things are decided in the vacuum of Washington. There is no game-changing effort here --that is seen as a needless and harmful addition. These are the Philadelphia Eagles not wanting their fans to boo the Cowboys for fear it will make the other team mad and harder to play. What a miscalculation that turned out to be.

Instead they should remember a young Senator who came out of nowhere challenging the establishment and winning in unconventional ways --who won on the strength of shaking things up by appealing to the desire of people to have a leader to deal with the problems they care about. There was none of that in this most critical of fights. The lack of imagination and the lack of inspiration brought to support health care reform is unconscionable.

That said, at this point, I simply hope we get something.

[Clio the Leo]

1. David Shuster is convinced this will open the door to the PO again...

.... I think that's overly optimistic, but we shall see.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=433&topic_id=133420&mesg_id=135095

[IndianaGreen]

2. Obama looks at a chessboard wondering what it is

I read that in one of the blogs in response to the multi-dimensional chess claim.