Paul Krugman:Health Care Showdown

[cal04]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/22/opinion/22krugman.html?_r=1

America’s political scene has changed immensely since the last time a Democratic president tried to reform health care. So has the health care picture: with costs soaring and insurance dwindling, nobody can now say with a straight face that the U.S. health care system is O.K. And if surveys like the New York Times/CBS News poll released last weekend are any indication, voters are ready for major change.

The question now is whether we will nonetheless fail to get that change, because a handful of Democratic senators are still determined to party like it’s 1993.

And yes, I mean Democratic senators. The Republicans, with a few possible exceptions, have decided to do all they can to make the Obama administration a failure. Their role in the health care debate is purely that of spoilers who keep shouting the old slogans — Government-run health care! Socialism! Europe! — hoping that someone still cares.

The polls suggest that hardly anyone does. Voters, it seems, strongly favor a universal guarantee of coverage, and they mostly accept the idea that higher taxes may be needed to achieve that guarantee. What’s more, they overwhelmingly favor precisely the feature of Democratic plans that Republicans denounce most fiercely as “socialized medicine” — the creation of a public health insurance option that competes with private insurers.


(snip)
Honestly, I don’t know what these Democrats are trying to achieve. Yes, some of the balking senators receive large campaign contributions from the medical-industrial complex — but who in politics doesn’t? If I had to guess, I’d say that what’s really going on is that relatively conservative Democrats still cling to the old dream of becoming kingmakers, of recreating the bipartisan center that used to run America.

But this fantasy can’t be allowed to stand in the way of giving America the health care reform it needs. This time, the alleged center must not hold.

[ejpoeta]

1. what's going on is that it is not them for whom a public plan may come too late.

they don't sense the urgency because they are covered. And even though there are a few members who actually are there to represent their constituents, the rest are either taking their cues from the moneyholders, or are too afraid of their own shadow to stand up for what is right. No matter what you think of the republicans, at least they rammed through what they wanted and intended to do regardless of what anyone said. They didn't worry about what it made them look like. They just did it. Anyway they could. They didn't let name calling and the fear of being labeled stop them. We need some damned dems like that.