10/8: The Silver Bullet?

Have Dem senators figured out a compromise approach to health care reform that would satisfy both progressives and centrists? Liberal bloggers hope so. The netroots are currently buzzing about Sam Stein's report that Dem senators are considering a proposal "that would establish a robust, national public option for insurance coverage but give individual states the right to opt out of the program." Lefty bloggers prefer this idea to the compromise solution being floated by Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE), which "envisions health-insurance plans run by state governments." Liberals believe that Carper's proposal would result in weak state insurance options with little bargaining power, whereas the "opt-out" compromise would mean that "the blue states get the public option at full strength and the red states get to ignore it entirely." Joan McCarter explains:

"If giving governors the opportunity to turn it down is the compromise we need make a strong, federal public option operating the majority of the nation, it might be worth a look. It's certainly better than Carper's alternative, creating fragmented state options. It's better than co-ops or triggers, or even [NY Sen. Chuck] Schumer's level playing field."

What else is happening in the blogosphere?

• Liberal bloggers (McCarter, Klein, Cohn, Benen, Bowers) and conservative bloggers (Malkin, Glass, Levin, Allahpundit) are both discussing the CBO's prediction that Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus's health care bill "would meet President Obama's cost target and would reduce future federal deficits by a deeper amount than previously projected."
• Liberal bloggers (Moulitsas, DougJ, Kleiman, Clawson, Black, Lemos, Benen) are blasting the 30 GOP senators who voted against Sen. Al Franken's (D-MN) amendment to the 2010 Defense Appropriations bill, which "would withhold defense contracts from companies like Halliburton if they restrict their employees from taking workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court."
• Conservative bloggers (Malkin, Bandes, Howe) are criticizing House Dems (and the 6 GOPers who joined them) for voting to block a resolution to remove Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) from the chairmanship of the Ways and Means Committee.
• Liberal bloggers (Moulitsas, Benen, Lemos) are buzzing about the news that ex-Sen. Bob Dole (R-KS) endorsed the Dem health care reform effort.

HEALTH CARE REFORM: A Public Option For Blue States

Most liberal bloggers are open to the idea of establishing a national government-run insurance option but giving individual states the right to opt out:

• The Washington Monthly's Steve Benen: "[This] new compromise proposal [is] easily the best of the bunch. [...] This effectively takes Carper's idea, and makes it better. Carper would let states create their own public options, and possibly increase their economies of scale by partnering with other states. This new alternative makes it an opt-out, instead of an opt-in -- Congress would create the public plan, and if states didn't want to participate, they wouldn't have to. As a rule, it's tough to figure out what public option opponents will come up with in terms of rationales, but this really should satisfy the concerns of [NE Sen.] Ben Nelson & Co. It's not altogether clear who's championing this approach, but if a compromise has to be part of the mix, this one has real promise."
• Daily Kos' mcjoan: "This could make political sense. What they're talking about is a robust national public option, one that would be set up to be successful. If giving governors the opportunity to turn it down is the compromise we need make a strong, federal public option operating the majority of the nation, it might be worth a look. It's certainly better than Carper's alternative, creating fragmented state options. It's better than co-ops or triggers, or even Schumer's level playing field."
• TPM's Josh Marshall: "[J]ust on the face of it, this sounds like a compromise reformers could embrace because I suspect many, probably most states would opt in, providing a plenty large enough pool to get to the bargaining power that is essential to make a public option work. Part of my assumption here is that you'd have relatively few states opting out and they'd tend toward lower population states, likely clustered in the South and mountain states. So I suspect that a substantial majority of the population would be in opt-in states, providing the bargaining power that would make the public option threshold viable. And if the public option works, one would think the people in opt-out states would quickly become pretty envious of the folks in states who had the option and pressure their state governments to get in."
• The Washington Post's Ezra Klein: "[This proposal] gives you an essentially national administrative structure, but also gives states the right to reject the option entirely. It means, in other words, that the blue states get the public option at full strength and the red states get to ignore it entirely. That's a real improvement over Tom Carper's proposal allowing individual states to create their own public options, which would would be quite a bit weaker than a national program. It also creates a neat policy experiment: We can see, over time, what happens to state insurance markets that include the national public option and compare them with those that don't. We can see whether the worst fears of conservatives are realized and private insurers are driven out and providers are forced out of business due to low payment rates, and we can see whether the hopes of liberals are right and costs come down and private insurers become leaner and more efficient. Or both, or neither."
• TalkLeft's Big Tent Democrat: "Now we can define the right wing of the Senate Democratic Party as in favor of the Carper Proposal [...] and the House Democrats in favor of a robust public option (national plan, Medicare +5 rates, etc.) President Obama can swoop in and be the 'consensus builder' -- and put forth the Blue State Public Option -- a national robust public option from which individual states can opt out. Nebraska and North Dakota can have their state run co-ops. Arkansas and Alabama can take a pass on the whole thing (no mandates, no public plan, etc.) 11 dimensional chess or just plain luck -- this solution would work for me as a camel's nose under the tent health care reform worth passing."
• AMERICAblog's John Aravosis: "[I] definitely need more information as to what decreasing the size of the overall market does to costs. But there is a certain irony, and magic, in the fact that all the red states could simply opt out and screw themselves while the rest of us get healthy and save money with better care."

Not every liberal blogger is open to this compromise, however. The Daily Kos community is divided, with some diarists expressing enthusiasm for the idea and others criticizing it. Firedoglake's Jane Hamsher is perhaps the most prominent liberal blogger to oppose the idea: "The fact that anyone is taking this seriously this morning, or celebrating the fact that 'red' states will opt out and screw themselves, is the price we pay for having talked about the health care debate in purely political terms. [...] Health care is a civil right. This is a matter of right and wrong, and it's our moral obligation to heal the sick and leave no one behind."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: The Chamber's Mistake

Think Progress' Matthew Yglesias analyzes the recent defections from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in response to the organization's opposition to climate change legislation:

"The fundamental problem the Chamber of Commerce is going to have on this is that they're really really wrong. Not like how they're morally wrong about, say, labor rights or workplace safety rules. They're analytically mistaken about the interests of the United States business community. If we take action to avert ecological catastrophe, economic growth will still happen. Capitalism will march on. Big companies will be big, and people will earn lots of money managing them. Yes, the present-day owners of coal companies or manufacturers specifically wedded to unusually energy-intensive processes will be in trouble. But 'business' in a broad and general sense will keep on keeping on. People will still want gadgets and furniture, will shop at stores, will buy and sell, and generally keep being customers for business.

The real risk is being run by doing nothing. It's doing nothing that might end the party, and lead to various kinds of nightmare scenarios. And over time, more and more firms are going to see that they have no particular stake in underpricing pollution. One maybe of the Chamber board is a guy from Anheuser-Busch. A serious climate bill's not going to put him out of business. Nor, to just pick board affiliated companies whose lines of business I recognize, is it going to put State Farm Insurance or IBM or AT&T or Pfizer or Accenture out of business. But the executives at those companies and their kids and their customers are all going to face all the problems caused by untrammeled climate change. And why, genuinely, should a pharmaceutical company or a telecom company be fighting to stop people from stopping an ecological disaster? It genuinely doesn't make sense."

LEST WE FORGET: We've Been Saying That for Years, Sir

From Overheard in the Office:

Manager in sales meeting: I want you to ask for my help. I'm like a tool in your tool box. I am a tool.