http://blog.buzzflash.com/carpenter/542And it's not just the money. It's an attitude thing. This nation is sitting on a speeding train headed directly for one helluva wreck -- a consequence principally of gross income inequalities and chronic financial concentrations and their unmitigated power -- but you'd never know it from the pace and procedures of the United States Congress. Ho-hum.At any rate, back to the subject of the opening paragraph: health-care legislation, an attenuated progressive version of which has now stumbled to the U.S. Senate, whereupon Republican Lindsey Graham, with ineffable lucidity, declared it "D.O.A."
Indeed, even the Senate's homegrown versions are likely dead, given that Majority Leader Harry Reid, with an exclusive eye toward surviving his electoral desert of 2010, came out of nowhere and inserted an "opt-out" public option. Or, he might go with an opt-in. Or, he might settle on a trigger. Or, the public option might -- will? -- get obliterated altogether.
He doesn't have the votes. It puzzles me that so many rank-and-file progressives still seem to be cheerleading a public option that arithmetically has the same chance of passage as my hometown Kansas City Chiefs have of making it to the Super Bowl this year. But I suppose GroupThink-idealism does have a way of clouding otherwise sound judgment. Still, it's a trifle depressing to witness so many who are so self-fooled.
But here's something that puzzles me even more. Let's assume for the sake of argument that Mr. Reid does find the votes for, at best, a public-option opt-out or opt-in or trigger. Again, when it comes to the U.S. Senate and a public option, these are best-case scenarios -- not even the more liberal House could find the votes for a robust plan. And, best case, they mean either a continuing patchwork of national health care -- they mean governors like Mark Sanford or Tim Pawlenty helping to determine who does and who doesn't receive care -- or progress deferred, interminably.
This is what grassroots progressives are cheering on?
These are regressive options. If Congress codifies any of these plans, it'll be institutionalized for years, even decades. Any progress made toward single-payer or Medicare-for-all-who-want-it or even a genuine public option will be developmentally arrested for a (another) generation.
But, perhaps grassroots sentiments are evolving. Yesterday I received not so much as one disagreeable email in response to my piece about "stripping" the public option, as currently conceived, from health-care legislation; and last night I noticed that even the fiery Ed Schultz had finally come around to my, and many other liberals', way of thinking: anything less than a robust plan just isn't worth passing, he conceded, as did guests Rep. Dennis Kucinich and Sen. Bernie Sanders... 
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