Brian Beutler:

[T]he dispute boils down to a question of whether Democrats should be willing to test the limits of what's technically feasible under the law and Senate rules--whether they should go farther than even the Republicans went when they used reconciliation to pass the Bush tax cuts--or whether doing so would steer U.S. politics on to a course so fraught and unpredictable that the consequences could outstrip the substantive gains they'd make by passing a comprehensive health care bill.

This is not the dispute at all, even though Mark Schmitt, whose Theory of Change has been thoroughly discredited, wants you to think it is. Sen. Chuck Schumer nicely described the "liberal" position:

While I strongly oppose the BaucusCare Mandate Tax, I do want to make clear that I support both individual and employer mandates. The solution is simple, UNLESS you are mainly concerned about the profits of the health insurance industry.

The solution is a simple one. BaucusCare provides:

Excise Tax. The consequence for not maintaining insurance would be an excise tax. [. . .]

Instead, this should state "Autoenrollment In a Public Insurance Option. The consequence for not maintaining insurance would be auto-enrollment into a public insurance option."

There. Problem fixed.

Speaking for me only

The Beltway "progressives" have discovered there is only so much get along from actual progressives in their drive to pass an Health Insurance Industry Profits Protection Act. This puts them in an awkward position. For example, they have to, as Matt Yglesias does here, ignore, even misstate, the fact that the BaucusCare they are championing does in fact include an "excise tax" (Max Baucus' phrase, not mine) for those Americans unable to afford to purchase health insurance. Yglesias calls the Baucus excise tax "regulation" -- "Not being a politician, I can just note that we generally speak the English language in the United States and we’ve never previously taken the word 'tax' to include all regulations that increase some people’s costs of buying stuff."

Ahem, it is rather ridiculous to complain about BaucusCare being described as containing an excise tax when in fact Max Baucus himself included a provision titled "Excise Tax," that provides for taxing people unable to afford to buy health insurance. That is the reality of the mandates without a public option. It is a tax on the less well off created to insure the profits of the health insurance industry. That is the reality. Deal with it Beltway Villagers.

Speaking for me only

Woe onto the Democrat unprepared to throw the public option under the bus. Ezra Klein ran his series of attacks on Dean and the public option. Ron Brownstein, no doubt a JournOLister, ripped Dean. And now Ed Kilgore compares Dean's opposition to an excise tax on the middle class (Yes Democrats, that's what a "mandate" is. Even their patron saint Max Baucus calls it that) IF a public option is not included in health care reform with Joe Lieberman's stance that a mandate is good but a public option is bad. Kilgore decided to misstate Howard Dean's position and Joe Lieberman's on health care reform:

Suzy Khimm's post at The Treatment about Howard Dean's latest remarks on health care reform strategy shows the perils of the obsession with the public option on both sides of the barricades. After a fiery demand that progressives refuse to relent on the public option, the good Doctor allowed as how if we can't get that, he'd be fine with legislation that just regulated health insurance abuses.

[MORE. . . ]

Neil Lewis of The New York Times disappointingly mixes factual reporting and hearsay from a tabloid-type, book proposal by a dubious character in the John Edwards-Rielle Hunter drama and presents it as a news story on the grand jury investigation into the contributions Fred Baron made to Hunter from Edwards' presidential campaign fund.

The factual reporting includes the topics of Hunter's grand jury testimony:

Ms. Hunter testified to the grand jury in detail about her relationship with Mr. Edwards, lawyers involved in the case said, as well as the benefits she was provided by his supporters after she became pregnant.

[More...]

[EZRA:] Can you support the Finance Committee bill in its current form?

[ROCKEFELLER:]No.

[EZRA:]Why?

[ROCKEFELLER:] There are a number of big things. The Children's Health Insurance Program is put into the exchange. That's like putting it into a farmer's market. It loses its defined benefits. And children need defined benefits. Obviously the public option. I feel very strongly about that as a discipline on the private health insurance market. The public health insurance option doesn't have to make a dime. It doesn't have to make Wall Street happy or shareholders happy. It just has to sell a product at cost. That will put pressure on private insurance companies to bring down their premiums. [MORE . . .]

Time:

[O]ne place where Baucus does not appear to be so flexible is on the question of adding a government-run "public option" to the measure as an alternative for providing coverage to the uninsured.

Thus, if as Paul Krugman endorses, BaucusCare is the template for health care reform, what that means is that Democrats will enact a huge tax increase on the middle class with no real reform of the system.

Because that is what an individual mandate means. That is political suicide. If BaucusCare is the template, what must be removed is the mandate. Forget about health care "reform." Just expand Medicaid, provide subsidies and enact the meaningless unenforceable regulations that people seem to think will work. But forget about the rest of it.

Speaking for me only

Coming from Krugman, this is shockingly absurd (as opposed to Robert Reich, who gets it exactly right, as does Booman):

There’s enough wrong with the Baucus proposal as it stands to make it unworkable and unacceptable. But that said, Senator Baucus’s mark is better than many of us expected. If it serves as a basis for negotiation, and the result of those negotiations is a plan that’s stronger, not weaker, reformers are going to have to make some hard choices about the degree of disappointment they’re willing to live with.

(Emphasis supplied.) After writing so well on the stupidity of the political bargaining on the stimulus bill, it is shocking to read this ridiculous column from Krugman. Indeed, Krugman writes:

And that's Ezra, feeling the prevailing breeze and trying to remain relevant:

[Grassley]has made Baucus look like a weak, ineffectual fool. . . . He let Baucus end the process with a compromised bill and not a single vote of confidence from his Republican colleagues. He made Baucus look like a knave.

Later Ezra writes "Baucus [was left] with little evident power at this juncture. . . . That means the White House and the Senate leadership are going to play the primary role in both offering concessions and guaranteeing their preservation in the process. The bill remains in Max Baucus's committee, but at this point, it's largely out of his hands."

Ezra is a bit of a mouthpiece for the White House these days so this is a harbinger that Baucus has been thrown under the bus by the White House. Yesterday was a big day.

Speaking for me only

Ryan Grim:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters at a Thursday briefing that she was glad to see the Senate making progress on its version of health care reform but she emphasized that the House plan would look markedly different - by including a public option. "I fully support the public option. The public option will be in the bill that passes the House," Pelosi (D-Calif.) said purposefully.

Still in play.

Speaking for me only

Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) is the legislative voice of the view, championed in the blogs by Ezra Klein and on cable TV by Dylan Ratigan, that "the market" can cure what ails health care in this country. Wyden writes a NYTimes Op-Ed arguing for this view:

The problem with these [health care] bills, however, is that they would not make the exchanges available to all Americans. Only very small companies and those individuals who can’t get insurance outside of the exchange — 25 million people — would be allowed to shop there. This would leave more than 200 million Americans with no more options, private or public, than they have today.

Wyden then argues for his bill - which has as much chance of passing as does single payer. Which is to say none. But even if it did become law, it would not work imo. The notion that insurance companies will compete amongst themselves in a way that will improve health care is simply a fantasy (See Scarecrow on the MA experience.) They never have and they never will. The only way competition would actually work to improve health care is where a public option is available. Wyden and his fellow "market magic" advocates do not care about a public option. Certainly their right. But they are wrong, imo. In any event, it is all academic as the Wyden proposal never even can arrive now, much less be DOA. It is a discussion about unicorns.

Speaking for me only

Ryan Grim at HuffPo:

[Sen. Jay] Rockefeller (D-W.V.) said he has company in his reservations in the Senate. "A lot of them have come up to me and thanked me because I said what they're thinking. And because I sit next to Baucus and am senior, my saying it, I think, was good leverage and helpful and made it easier on people," Rockefeller told the Huffington Post.

And from our old friend Roland Burris -- "If there is no public option in the bill that hits the floor, said Sen. Roland Burris (D-Ill.), he'll vote against it. "I will oppose any bill that does not have a public option," Burris told the Huffington Post. Sen. Russ Feingold called BaucusCare "health care reform in name only."