Ezra Klein: There is no plan B for health reform (IOW, ignore the Eeyores and demoralization trolls)

[backscatter712]

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/

The Wall Street Journal has a splashy piece this evening on the White House's plan B for health-care reform: a fallback approach that would cover 15 million people, do less to reform the system and cut costs, and carry a lower price tag. Call it health-care lite.

Plan B has been around for awhile. In August, discussions raged in the White House over whether to pare back the bill. The comprehensive folks won the argument, but people also drew up plans for how you could pare back the bill, if it came to that. More thinking was done on this in the aftermath of the Massachusetts election, when Rahm Emanuel and some of the political folks again argued for retreating to a more modest bill. As you'd expect, these conversations included proposals for how that smaller bill would look.

At this point, I could quote some White House sources swearing up and down that that's all this is. A vestigial document that's being blown out of proportion by a conservative paper interested in an agenda-setting story. They're furious over this story. None of the quotes are sourced to the White House -- not even anonymously -- raising questions that the whole thing is sabotage. But it hardly matters. There's no Plan B at this point in the game, and most everyone knows it.

Think about what's entailed in restarting the process. The Senate Finance Committee and the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee would have to build new bills. The House Energy and Commerce Committee, Education and Labor Committee, and Ways and Means Committee would need to write new legislation. All of those proposals would need to be merged. There would need to be discussions in committees, and then weeks and weeks on the floor. Then there would need to be conference. Then they'd have to come back to the floor.

...

Ezra's point: There's no upside to starting over, not even to do a "Lite" version of the bill designed to be less politically objectionable - it'd take too long, it'd cost even more political capital, the Rethugs and Tea Klux Klan would screech "DEATH PANELS!!!111!one" all over again. There's no upside. It's the Senate bill plus the reconciliation sidecar, or no bill at all.

To put it bluntly, the Wall Street Urinal is full of shit. I know, shocking to hear this about a Murdoch rag, isn't it?

[FrenchieCat]

1. The Free "Press" are at it furiously the day before the Summitt,

as are many Duers.

They love this stuff, these dark stories with the "May" headline,
where the "May" gets edited out,

or the stories of "Secret deals" that weren't secret,
and weren't really the deal being advertise once you read
the fine print.......and that kind of shit.

DUers eat this kind of stuff up for lunch every day and still are searching for more.

Feed the beast...and so WAPO, WSJ and NYT all are glad to serve it up!

[backscatter712]

4. Yep. Anything to drive their narrative.

So out comes the half-baked rumor of the "Plan B".

[Cha]

2. Somebody should have a compilation

of all the mediawhore propaganda stories that are planted out there to demoralize suckers.

[backscatter712]

3. That would fill a warehouse.

The media spews so much bullshit that it's impossible to track it all.

[Cha]

5. But, think of the wealth of indefatiguable

material for someone's invertigative book!

[Political Heretic]

6. Plan A is bad enough.

So far... will the bad Senate Bill get fixed in this finalization process - we'll see, I hope so.

[Bobbie Jo]

7. K&R

:kick: