TPM Reader GB has some advice for us as the senate debate on health care reform gets started tomorrow …
As a long time reader, and occasional correspondent, I’m writing to urge you not to get misled into an obsession with the “public option” as the key element of the senate debate or the final version of the bill. Not because its unimportant but because its a semantic issue that in the end will not make a huge difference in the bill. As you yourselves have reported, the “public option” will not in any event be a significant part of the health care landscape even if the version in the Reid bill is passed into law.
The big issue, it seems to me, is whether or not the Senate’s revenue mechanism — including health care benefits worth greater than $8000 per year as taxable compensation for individual and household filings — or the House’s, which is a surtax on incomes above $500K: much more progressive and much more consistent with the basic Keynesian economic (as opposed to moral) justification for social benefits, that they encourage more efficient distribution of income by creating a broader base of consumption. (Ie, more people with adequate disposable income and fewer people with excess wealth that is not spent).
Being myself somewhat involved in public employee health insurance issues in my state, Nevada, and knowing that the right wing has been banging on about “cadillac benefits” for quite some time, I’m quite sure that if the Senate mechanism is included, we’ll see a rather sustained campaign at state and national levels of demonization against the more generous plans negotiated on behalf of unionized workers in the public and private sector. In other words, it’ll be an open door for the Chamber of Commerce to continue to try to campaign to drive down employer-based benefits across the board. And since most people who already have coverage through employers won’t really be effected by the Obama plan’s benefits, the additional cost to employees who have good insurance at work will make the whole bill a net negative — and the anger will be, of course, directed at Obama.
Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC has talked a bit about this issue as the key issue in the floor debate and eventual conference committee, and he’s right. Don’t take the bait and get hung up on the public option — look at the two very different types of taxation.
