The Senate Finance Committee, as expected, minutes ago voted to reject two separate version of a public health insurance option. The three Democrats voting to reject both, including the weaker version that did not drive down costs by pegging reimbursements to Medicare rates, were Sens. Max Baucus, Kent Conrad and Blanche Lincoln.
All three arrived to that position in odd ways.
Back in the summer, Sen. Lincoln said “Options should include private plans as well as a quality, affordable public plan or non-profit plan that can accomplish the same goals as those of a public plan.” Yet given a range of options for a quality, affordable public plan, she rejected them both.
Sen. Conrad for a long while kept using the circular logic that he wouldn’t support a public option because there was not a 60-vote supermajority in support of it, always ignoring that it was votes like his own that could belie that assumption. (As the media ignored that Sen. Conrad’s job was not whip counting.)
Yet in recent days he abandoned circular logic for illogic, repeatedly arguing against a public option because France has a successful universal health insurance system that is not government-run.
Conrad has it backwards, as well as upside-down, and sideways. The American public option proposal would compete with private insurers, not eliminate them and create a government-run system. While that successful French system Conrad loves so much is very much government-run.
It’s clear that Conrad, for whatever $1.6 million reason, simply opposes a public option, no matter what the politic or policy logic is.
Finally, there is Sen. Baucus, who in his closing remarks today, said that he likes the public option, reminded us that he included the public option in his initial white paper, yet could not support it now because it could not get 60 votes in the end.
Then Sen. Chuck Schumer, sponsor of one the public option amendments, retorted and said he believed it could get 60 votes. Unlike Sen. Conrad and Baucus, he did not pretend the outcome was certain. But he believes it’s possible.
Who’s right? We don’t know. All Senators have not voted yet. All have not made formal declarations. Several are keeping their powder dry.
Which is why it is silly at this stage to vote against something because of how many votes it will eventually garner. It’s like saying you’re not going to swing the bat in the 4th inning because the other team said you would lose in the 9th.
Fortunately, there will be a 9th inning, as well as a 7th and 8th. There will be a full Senate vote on public option. There will be a House-Senate conference. And then there will be a final vote on the joint bill.
If Schumer can prove he can get 59 votes, — at least to cut off debate and move to a floor vote, allowing Senators like Lincoln and Conrad to oppose without obstructing the majority will — Baucus will have no excuse.
