Who do you blame for the loss of the public option?

[Radical Activist]

Poll question: Who do you blame for the loss of the public option?

Sometime last year the netroots suddenly decided that the public option was the most important issue ever. I couldn't find any DU threads about it posted in 2008. But for some reason, certain pundits told us it was paramount after it looked like the Senate wouldn't pass it.

Who do you blame for the public option not being in the final HCR bill?

[gratuitous]

1. Anyone in Congress or the Oval Office who knew

Anyone in Congress or the Oval Office who knew that the public option would cut costs, reduce the deficit, provide better delivery of medical services, and save lives, and didn't fight for it. So far, I have a short list of 536 names.

By the way, the same goes for single payer.

[fadedrose]

8. delete

[Tesha]

2. Obama, Rahm, and the rest of the DLC and DINOs, in that order. (NT)

[Radical Activist]

4. Obama proposed a plan with the public option, spent months pushing for that plan

and only gave in to a compromise after it was clear the Senate would not pass it. Why blame the man who fought for the public option rather than those who forced him to compromise it out of the bill?

[Tesha]

10. Yeah, sure he did. (NT)

[LiberalAndProud]

3. Maybe it's just coincidence,

but President Obama abandoned the public option shortly following a one-on-one with Ben Nelson. I have imagined the conversation many times, as Ben discussed what could and could not be in the bill to garner his support. So my vote is for "Conservative Democrats".

[Radical Activist]

6. That's the most logical explanation I've heard in a long time.

It should be obvious. I don't know why people are so attached to believing there was some kind of conspiracy of Obama fighting against something he introduced and fought for. I think he kept fighting for it long after they knew it was unlikely to pass.

[Warpy]

5. Lieberman alone killed the most important portion

which was to extend a Medicare buy in down to age 55.

That would have done more for the hard core of uninsured people than just about anything else.

Nobody knows why Lieberman did this. His insurance company owners have absolutely no interest in insuring an older population with chronic illness.

He must have done it out of pure spite.

[AlinPA]

12. Lieberman stopped it.

[subterranean]

13. As I recall, he had spoken in favor of a Medicare buy-in just a few months earlier.

No wonder everyone despises him.

[jpgray]

7. It makes little sense to blame Obama exclusively or primarily

But there's no question he listened to Clinton veterans and other old guard technocrats who believed -nothing- would be possible without industry support. The blame I attribute to Obama is in choosing old establishment types who exemplify the revolving door, and then in his listening to their (in my opinion terrible) advice. Centrist journalists loved the horse-trading savvy and the backroom gamesmanship of it all--that's what they like to see. Yet this hard complex effort did Obama few favors with the public.

I would not blame Obama at all for it if he had -tried- more strenuously for the public option, and then failed to get it included. I wanted him to sell it, articulate it, and debate it at every opportunity. That it enjoyed majority support in polls despite the lack of strong pushing indicates to me at least that there was an opening there.

Max Baucus, Ben Nelson et al did more to ruin it directly than Obama ever could, naturally. It's not so much that the reform has no bright spots, there are many. But those bright spots are undermined by ruinous subsidies, concessions and waste that are in there for the benefit of private industry.

If Congress wants to kick ass in the lame duck session, they could overturn McCarran-Ferguson. :D

[fadedrose]

9. K

[leftstreet]

11. lol oops

K&R