For sale: birthrights. Price: one mess of pottage each.

(10 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

In my last diary, I asked the Progressive Caucus to explain, precisely, what constituted a “robust public option.”  Is a “robust public option” the one currently in HR 3200, or is it the one originally demanded by Jane Hamsher among others?

But I don’t think anyone in the campaign to defend a “robust public option” understood what was at stake, for none of them took the time to define the term for me.  If the “robust public option” is the public option now in HR 3200, then it can be anything one wishes; co-ops, triggers, whatever.

(Crossposted to Orange)

OK — here is the issue.  The Congressional Progressive Caucus has been proclaiming all along that its support for a health insurance bill pivots upon the inclusion (in that bill) of a “robust public option.”  Andrew Coates tells us, however, that:

Although the Congressional Progressive Caucus’s press release placed the word “robust” before “public option,” they did not define what that term meant to them. Is it not odd for any legislator, much less dozens, to “hinge” their support for an entire (and very important) bill on the inclusion in that bill of an entity they have not defined?

So, OK, let’s define “robust public option.”  Jane Hamsher, back in July, told us:

   We need to get progressive members of Congress to commit that they will not vote for any bill or conference report that does not have a robust public plan that is:

      * available nationwide

      * available on day one

      * and accountable to Congress and the voters

Are we still making that demand?  The last letter I got from nyceve equated a “robust public option” with a public option “without co-ops or triggers.”

Now, the Republicans are master negotiaters.  They know that at least some Democrat out there is going to think their support is essential to the bill, so they refuse all support to the bill and wait for the Democratic Party concessions to roll forth.  Thus Thomas Carper and Olympia Snowe.

The Blue Dogs, too, are master negotiaters.  They know that they can load up their bill proposals with demands, and that the further they push, the better the eventual “compromise” will look for them.  Thus the Baucus bill.

These people understand two ways of “successful” negotiation:

1) Start by demanding what you actually want

2) Do not give ground until you see compromise from the other side

The “progressive” Democrats, on the other hand, strike a pose of faux negotiation.  Their one “non-negotiable” demand, a “robust public option,” is in fact negotiable, because the definition of the phrase “robust public option” has changed.  It’s now a “public option without co-ops or triggers,” the public option currently in HR 3200, available to 10% by 2013.

So let’s see: the “progressives” are spending all this energy trying to get our Congressmembers to vote for a bill that requires every American earning a decent wage to donate up to 11% of her income, indefinitely, to a private insurer, for the sake of a public option which will not control costs, and is not available except to 10% of the public and then only in 2013.

Really?  Is that what they’re doing?  Is that the tough negotiating stance the “progressives” have staked out?

beijingbetty and Robert Reich remind us that the demand for a public option is about cost control.  But HR 3200, as written, does not control costs!  Do I need to repeat it for you?

..federal payments for subsidies will far exceed any projections that are now being discussed. There are at least 100 million Americans less than 65 years of age with incomes below 400 percent of FPL. If eligibility for federal subsidies is set at that level, the CBO projects that their cost will be about $773 billion between 2013 and 2019. Concerning Medicaid expansion, the CBO has also estimated that extending Medicaid to an additional group of Americans with incomes for a family of four up to $33,000 a year would cost about $500 billion over 10 years.

So, if the “progressives” are willing to fight for a bill with a public option, even if that public option is only available to a few people (which will probably be a very few after four years of mandates) and then only in 2013, why should the negotiators on the other side of the table take them seriously about any of their other demands?

Baucus knows, then, that he can wait: if the “progressives” are willing to change their definition of a “robust public option” to suit his tastes, they’ll be willing to cave on his other demands, too.  At any rate, this is the attitude I’m getting from this comment, to my last diary:

You give on the bills right now after all of the public exposure, and the effort will collapse.  The public will punish all Democrats for not getting done what they promised. Plus you will find lots of Democratic activists sitting on their hands.  1994 revisited.  No thanks. We’ll never get the bill we want that way.

There’s a number of hidden assumptions here.  Let’s unpack them:

1) Progressives will no longer wish to work for health care justice if they don’t get a bad bill right now.  They will just “sit on their hands” and accept the current system indefinitely.

2) The public will “punish all Democrats” for refusing to vote for a bill which gives away 11% of their income to private insurers, and which doesn’t control costs.

3) We’ll never get the bill we want by refusing to vote for a bill we don’t want.

4) Americans will punish the Democrats for not caving on their original demand, especially if it’s for a rather popular public option.

Do you buy any of that?  I don’t.

In summary: If we cave on the demand for a “robust public option,” by which I mean a public option OPEN TO ALL on DAY ONE, then we will be like Esau, who sold his birthright to Jacob for a mess of pottage.  Actually we’ll be negotiating away the birthright of all Americans: the right not to buy health insurance, and 11% of incomes after a decade in which income has been totally flat.

Solution: we go back to the old demand.  Public option open to all on day one.  If no bill, then we organize against Blue Dogs in 2010 and get a good bill in 2011.  We show backbone, let them blink first.

Oh, and I couldn’t care less about your arguments for mandates.  The right not to buy health insurance (and the right to evade exorbitant payment requests for services rendered) is meant to bring an unjust insurance system down, just like the right of employees to strike is meant to bring down companies which can’t be bothered to pay a just wage.