I'd put Silver against any pollster any day. This is one conclusion of his I'm very sorry to see. He lauds other major accomplishments from the reform bill such as no American would be denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions or because they became sick, and subsidized health insurance coverage for millions of poor and middle-class Americans, which is by all standards a public option. Nonetheless it's not a permanent public option for everyone, only those who are poor. Middle class Americans won't qualify. Our American standard will be the rich can afford insurance no matter what, the poor will get it free and middle America will pay for both groups. That's not reform.
Silver does make a compelling statement about why the public option is dying:
It doesn't seem to me as though the Democratic leadership (including President Obama) is unnecessarily watering down bills for the sake of achieving a "bipartisan" outcome. It seems, rather, that they're calibrating things relatively well, and squeezing about the most juice they can out of these initiatives given the institutional imperatives of the Congress.Whatever. I'm going to call it like I see it. Conspiracy theorists that believe our president is a foreign born socialist enemy who wants to setup death squads to kill old people scared the living daylights out of 9 or 10 senators and that's what happened. We'll get health care reform and then we'll have to do it again in 5 years just like we do everything else.
Posts
