unless you were compromising with yourself. I'm sick of hearing the "public option was the compromise". No, it wasn't. You can't compromise on something when it's the only policy for which you have advocated. The public option, not single payer, is the demand. A compromised public option is likely to be the compromise. Improved and Enhanced Medicare for All, or single payer, was never on the table. It was never part of the negotiations, thus it was never a policy up for compromise.
Imagine you and your spouse plan to go to dinner(for the vegans out there, assume the meat entrees I use to illustrate my point are tofu based. Let's stay focused). You want steak (Medicare for All). Your spouse gives you two options, A) hamburger (Medicare-like, national public option), or B) beef jerky (limited access public option, w/out many market advantages of traditional Medicare). If you choose to drop your desire for a good steak dinner, and go all in for the hamburger, that's fine. However, you have not negotiated with your spouse. You've made a conscious decision to limit the dinner discussion to hamburger over beef jerky.
This is how it went when advocates of a single payer system-turned public option advocates didn't insist that Medicare for All be part of the national health care debate. They limited their compromising position between a national, medicare-like public option within the context of a market-based, for-profit health insurance system and a limited or even non-existent public option. Single payer was never on the table and thus could not be compromised upon. That was a strategic decision made by a good many activists, bloggers, and left-leaning advocacy groups. For my part, I could have settled on the Medicare-like, national public option, but I understood from the outset, that was the compromise. And, to make that compromise, one must argue for something more, ie to get a national, Medicare-like public option, single payer had to be on the table.
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Typo?
"This is how it went when advocates of a single payer system didn't insist that Medicare for All be part of the national health care debate."
Or advocates of the public option? Some of us were pretty vociferous...
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
I'm not talking about us...
I'm referring to FDL, MoveOn, DKos, etc.. They keep saying "public option WAS the compromise" to single payer. Since they didn't advocate for single payer on the health debate in Congress began, they couldn't compromise on it.
Medicare for All is Civil Rights
Ok, I think I made it
clearer.
Medicare for All is Civil Rights
Now I see!
Thanks
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
"Compromise" - wrong but somewhat defensible
OK, seems like you're annoyed because that phrase rewrites history to suggest that single payer was once "on the table or that SP-turned-PO-advocates made a demand for it. ("We made a go of it but alas, we had to compromise.")
Yeah, it's inaccurate but at least it's used as a bulwark against suggestions to weaken whatever it is—or should have been. ("Compromise
? We've already compromised.") It's an Orwellian rewrite used for mostly defensible ends, I guess. (In fact, if it had been used more, we might not be where we are now.)
The other interpretation, maybe, is that the original Jacob Hacker proposal was some sort of policy "compromise."
Every apathetic citizen is a silent enlistee in the cause of inverted totalitarianism.—Sidney Wolin
Not really....
"Yeah, it's inaccurate but at least it's used as a bulwark against suggestions to weaken whatever it is—or should have been."
The point is the PO is extremely weak because there was no Medicare for All on the table. It's actually quite a weak proposition, light years from what Hacker originally conceived. Now, it's possible that Congressional leaders made a compromise among themselves(we won't go near single payer as long as we work out a public option), I don't pretend to know. However, activists clearly are outside the system and can't make those compromises, or shouldn't. My argument is because the big activists groups and A List bloggers on the Left threw all their chips into the PO, they can not now argue this was a compromise. Without any pressure from the activists, the Left in Congress was left with only the public option as a negotiating chip.
Medicare for All is Civil Rights
stand corrected
You're saying: Come off it, activists and A list clowns. There was no "compromise." You couldn't compromise because it was already off the table when you got there. By saying "compromise," you're colluding with taking SP off the table at the outset (and trying to make your collusion look good as a shrewd "political calculation" in the process).
'zat it?
If I'm close to getting it, I stand completely corrected. I was hearing something different.
Every apathetic citizen is a silent enlistee in the cause of inverted totalitarianism.—Sidney Wolin
Bingo!
That's it. Well said. ;)
Medicare for All is Civil Rights
No Orwellian rewrites!
Leaving aside the ethical issues, when are we going to understand that it takes a huge amount of money to maintain a structure of lies: It takes think tanks, a multi-level media architecture, political consultants... And the alternative reality has to be "powered" at all times so the illusion is seamless. We don't have that kind of money. Our only recourse is the truth. "Any stick to beat a dog" will always rebound against us.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
Couldn't we have
a little Orwellian rewrite? :P
Actually, I was saying that if that's what the PO people were doing to hold the fort for a stronger PO, then, well, it was at least understandable as defensible for them even if it didn't adhere strictly to reality. By merely advocating for a public option, they are necessarily lowering their standards in all sorts of ways—so it's hardly surprising. I would not expect that they be held to our higher standards. After all, “the worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.”
Your comment regarding our scrupulousness in adhering to truth as our only recourse is a welcome reminder, if my earlier comment was interpretable as meaning otherwise.
Every apathetic citizen is a silent enlistee in the cause of inverted totalitarianism.—Sidney Wolin
It's asymptotic
We can always try to approach the truth but we can never be sure that we are there. That is why method is so crucial.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
public option
In the world of real politics, which is rarely about logic, public option as compromise is an immensely useful and workable phrase.
I'm not much interested in classic rhetoric or even discussing how many angels can dance on the head of the pin. I'm interested in getting a public option in place that well managed leads, I would hope, in my grandchildrens' lifetimes if not before, to unvisersal health care a la single payer for all beginning at birth.
I feel similarly about the famous "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself" phrase, that served marvelously well at the time to stiffen the public backbone.
Jesus B Ochoa
El Paso, Texas
Not all public option advocates agree
Digby, yesterday:
Then again, "Medicare For All" not only has a nice ring to it, people understand and support it. Oh well. Blood under the bridge!
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi