A Shell Game

I was at a county fair this weekend, and in one of the animal barns I saw something that reminded me to Max Baucus and his relationship with the Insurance lobby (see photo). He and his cronies are so attached to the Great Insurance teat that they will never enact serious reform. That is not news. Two amendments introducing the option (something the majority of regular, non-lobbied Americans, and doctors, want) were shot down in Baucus’ finance committee yesterday. Dems favoring real reform played down their disappointment, while Max continued to play hide the walnut by saying that he had seen some attractive things in some of the proposals. Really?

What will create some stir is when you see the headline: Insurance Companies Back Public Option. Why would they do that? The groundwork is already laid. First, one of the proposed so-called public options would not kick in until a trigger is squeezed.That is, under an arcane set of circumstances, if the Insurance companies are not performing up to a determined level of expectation, the public option is enabled. This doesn’t even happen until 2013, under the proposed approach.

Then, people who are in another insurance option at the time, are not allowed to avail themselves of the government-sponsored plan. What kind of option is that? It will be defined so tightly that only a small number will allowed to participate, and they will be very sick indeed. A guaranteed death spiral will commence on the very day that the option becomes operable, ensuring its early demise. By 2016 it will be history.

However, its brief life will allow Max, other blue dogs, and the Insurance giants to say that they did in fact support a public option, but gosh darn it, the government just can’t run anything! Score another one for the private sector, which never fucked up anything, ever.

And where are the Republicans during all of this? I mean, beside laughing their asses off? Well, to a large extent the various bills are already their handiwork. They just keep complaining about this and that detail, and Harry “the weasel” Reid sees to it that the changes get put in. Then, they criticize it and vote against it. That’s their job in this scenario. Does anyone doubt that if they wrote the entire thing, I mean every word, every punctuation mark, and that if it matched in every respect their legislative wet dreams, but that it was supported by Barack Obama, that they would unanimously vote against it?