Yet another poll has come up with the same results: Americans want a public health care option. But — count on it — Republicans and conservative Democrats will continue to thwart the will of the people.
Compromise means give and take — but the public option may be so compromised at this point that keeping it would be a sell-out. Ezra Klein thinks it may be better to achieve the benefits of a strong public option via other means:
Most of the energy in the Senate right now is being directed into a mad rush for compromise proposals on the public option. This reflects the sense that the right compromise on the public option is a compromised public option. That’s true to an extent, but you can define the public option so far downward — a state-based, opt-in, trigger-dependent, nonprofit option, for instance, is seriously under consideration right now — that you’d be better off trading it away for something that’s more meaningful.
… Having something called a public option is not, in the end analysis, as important as achieving the goals of the public option, and at this point, the policy itself is getting so watered down that it might be worth attempting to achieve its goals in a more straightforward fashion.
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