Huh. I never would have imagined that Ron Wyden's health care reform package would actually find some Republican cosponsors, but there you have it -- Bob Bennett in the Senate and Jo Ann Emerson in the House. Good for him.
This comes via Max Sawicky. I'm not super-enthusiastic about this plan on the merits (see Joe Klein for enthusiasm) but if Wyden can actually secure moderate Republican votes for this bill it's certainly a compromise I would accept. For the moment, though, I think it's best to focus on expanding the debate and noting that considerably more radical steps than the Wyden plan (which leaves us with a large role for quasi-competing private insurance firms) contemplates would bring substantial benefits. I think one can realistically envision something like John Edwards' plan getting proposed, picking up some steam, and then getting watered down into something more like Wyden's proposal in order to pass and that wouldn't be a bad thing for the country.
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Heads in the Sand
Sorry, I don't buy it. My impression is that the insurance companies plan to fight even small changes to the death, because they believe that even minor changes make the eventual move to single-payer (and thus the death of their industry) more likely. By this calculus, Wyden's plan will face the same problems as Edwards', or anyone else's. I'm convinced nothing will happen on this front until a substantial number of corportations simply decide to get out of providing insurance to their workers altogether. The resultant chaos, and horrendous damage to the middle class (who will suddenly find insurance either vastly more expensive or utterly unobtainable) will finally create the political will to override the insurance companies and Big Pharma. But nothing will happen until then.
Posted by beckya57 | May 7, 2007 3:17 PM