A Rodney King Moment

Congress had a 'Rodney King Moment' the other day.  No, nobody was beaten within inches of their life, unless you mean the public option.  What I'm talking about is the fact that we were all able to just get along for a few moments, with Olympia Snowe crossing over to the Dark Side.  This is the first time in the health care debate there has been any Republican support for health care reform.  Most of them are still screaming 'MOO!!!' as some cow on the track trying to stop the freight train of health care reform.  Last time I checked though, and I haven't thought about this often, trains run over cows.  And it gets ugly.  

So, does Senator Snowe's vote mean much?  In a sense, yes.  The fact that the Democrats were able to keep their unwieldy caucus together, while gaining the support of the most liberal Republican shouldn't come as a surprise, but the disgusting nature of the debate up until this point has changed the paradigm.  The fact that Snowe is able to be sensible and support a bill that actually reduces the deficit is commendable, and as Igor Volsky says, "Snowe’s vote in gives key Republican moderates the cover of “bipartisanship” to vote for the bill on the floor."  It also seems that the insurance industry somewhat forced Snowe's hand.  After the debacle of a report the insurance industry released earlier in the week, The insurance industry attacked Snowe’s amendments to lower the penalties for Americans who don’t meet the requirements of the individual mandate and the senator harshly condemned the industry’s conclusions. “It wasn’t based on any valid assumptions.”  

Also, lets not forget this was just a vote in the Finance Committee.  Snowe is not required to vote for the final bill.  Yet, with Snowe's support and the lack of support from any other Republicans up until the point should empower Harry Reid to produce a progressive bill that will be tougher in the insurance industry and hopefully have some version of a public option, which would drive down costs even further.  The Democrats should be pushing for these progressive reforms, since it has become clear that no Republican outside of Snowe, and possibly Senator Collins and Senator Voinavich.  The House plan with a robust public plan has been scored by the CBO, which concluded that it would have nearly the same price tag as the Senate Finance Bill, but will drive down costs for the individual consumer of health care, while covering 95% of Americans.

The question now isn't if, but when.  Where do we go from here?  The Senate HELP and Finance Committee bills have to be merged, and it seems as if Senator Reid is finally taking this seriously,

Reid's office is serious about ensuring the process blends the two existing bills, rather than develops a whole new bill. That means that on an issue like the public option, you could see a new policy emerge, as one bill has a public option and one doesn't. Creating some sort of compromise would fit into the "blend" framework. But on issues that only are addressed in one of two bills -- revenues are only in the Finance bill, for instance, and biologics are only in the HELP bill -- you'll see a variant of what's already written into the bill. The negotiators aren't likely to dream up a whole new tax and plug it into the legislation. They feel that would be a perversion of the committee process.

There are many questions that will be answered in the merging process and some that will be left for the Senate floor.  Chief among these will likely be the public option.  As Ezra Klein states, 

If Reid decides to put a public option, or some sort of public option compromise, into the bill, then it would require 60 senators to remove it on the floor, and only 41 senators to defend it. Conversely, if he decides to leave the public option fight for the floor, then it will take 60 senators to add it into the bill, and only 41 to block it.

Hopefully Reid grows some cajones and puts a public option into the merged bill.  If not, the public option may in fact be as dead as a cow on the train tracks.  As I've stated here often, the public option is the best way to bring down costs in our health care system and is the easiest and most efficient way to stop the runaway spending of the health care industry.

Seriously though, at least we've made it this far.  In the almost six decades since President Truman took on the issue of health care, this is the farthest the process has ever gotten.  I'd also like to apologize to Max Baucus, Three months ago, the main storyline in the press on health care centered on whether Democrats would craft a bipartisan bill (yay!) or go it alone (boo!) Through his desire to reach an agreement with the Cow Party, Baucus proved beyond a doubt that serious Republican support for any health care reform was totally impossible. He deserves credit for not losing a single Democrat in this process, while simultaneously proving the Republicans are the obstructionists we thought they were.