The Upside of Scott Brown's Election...

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...the Democrats in the Senate have finally been freed of having to seek the ever-elusive "60th vote" to pass health care reform.  I had discussed the reconciliation process a few months ago, but it finally seems that Harry Reid is prepared to use a majority vote to pass health care reform, regardless of what the "moderate" Democrats say.  By losing the 60th seat in the Senate, Democrats have been forced to seek other methods to pass legislation than negotiating with their own corporate-owned members (see Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu, Joe Lieberman, etc.) and this has led directly to using the reconciliation rule.  So this week a major push has been made by a range of Senate Democrats to include a public option in the reconciliation bill, with Senators from Dianne Feinstein (pretty moderate) to Chuck Schumer (former head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee during the 2006 and 2008 elections, who is widely regarded for his political acumen) signing on to the letter to Majority Leader Reid.  But hold on a minute, isn't the public option a HUGE LOSER among the public?  Don't Americans want less government intervention?  Well, not really, it turns out.  A poll of Nevada voters released yesterday contains some stunning revelations - 56% of Nevada voters favor "the national government offering everyone the choice of buying into a government administered health insurance plan" versus 38% opposed.  Nevada, if you'll remember, was a major battleground state in the 2008 election; after being solidly Republican for many years (with a strong Libertarian, anti-government streak to boot) President Obama prevailed there in the general election, so Nevada's a pretty good bellwether state through which to gauge the national mood.  The poll also has implications for Harry Reid's reelection prospects, as he is not doing too well in polling in his home state, so a strong move to pass Democratic legislation could in fact help his prospects in Nevada.


We will see what happens, and I'll try to be a bit better about posting timely information, as health care reform continues to provide lots of twists and turns to keep track of.

UPDATE II: Health Care Reform to be Killed?

Updates below...

Today is a tough day across for liberals.  Whether that is a positive development in you opinion or not, health care reform is something that, if done right, could help so many people in so many ways that any setback in the reform movement should be cause for concern among many. The health care bill in the Senate has been diluted by special interests (read: moneyed interests) and their lackeys in Congress to the point where it appears to be more beneficial to the American people to simply start over with a fresh bill. Howard Dean, one of the foremost experts on health care in American politics today, argues to kill the bill too:

"This is essentially the collapse of health care reform in the United States Senate," Dean said. "Honestly the best thing to do right now is kill the Senate bill, go back to the House, start the reconciliation process, where you only need 51 votes and it would be a much simpler bill."

Ah yes, the specter of reconciliation rears its controversial head again. The main bone of contention amongst liberals is that the cost-saving measures (the public option, for instance) have been either weakened to the point of irrelevancy or stripped out entirely, so that enforcing a universal mandate for Americans to purchase insurance without adequately affordable options beyond private insurance will anger many citizens (and voters). A development on that level could be disastrous for the country's health care system and,in an electoral sense, for the Democrats more generally. The Obama Administration is interested in getting a bill passed, no matter what the cost, to ensure an electoral "win" for the President on his signature domestic initiative, health care reform, but the repercussions of a bad bill getting passed could reverberate for many years. As I had written earlier, if the reform bill falls too heavily on young people's pocketbooks, then you can be sure that their allegiance to Obama's policies will be quite fleeting, and in fact could result in a backlash. Let's hope that cooler heads prevail, and the rush to pass something doesn't overwhelm the desire to enact a more-perfect bill.

UPDATE: Timothy Noah of Slate has a key writeup of what health care reform's failure could mean for the American public, and it's not pretty, as contrary to what many have come to believe (myself included) the reform bill would have effects beyond the uninsured:

A reasonable summary would be: health reform would make life easier for just about every person who needs to buy his or her own health insurance. It would also reassure those of us in the lucky 59 percent who didn't have this problem but could easily imagine acquiring it, especially amid the current economic turmoil. That's just about everybody. Health reform lends, says Hacker, the "security of knowing there's somewhere to get insurance outside of employment." Should it fail to pass, you would not have that security.

As I've mentioned before, it's difficult to put a price on the security that comes with knowing that even if you were to lose your job you would be able to have health insurance at a relatively affordable price (that's what the subsidies are for).  This bill may not be everything liberals want, but this is still farther than the American people have ever come before, and the effect passing it would have would be humongous.  We can tweak it later, once 31 million fewer people are uninsured.

UPDATE II: Okay, now I'm depressed.  Glenn Greenwald of Salon argues that Obama is simply using the intransigence of the Senate, and especially Sen. Joe Lieberman, as a foil to enact the handout to the health insurance industry he always intended.  The argument is that the Democrats will reap the benefits of the healthcare industry's deep pockets for campaign donations down the road if they help out the industry now by not reforming too much.  Sad, sad, sad.  Industry is poised to win again against the needs and desires of average Americans.  Are we entering a new Gilded Age, or have we already been in one for the last decade or more?  More on that theme presently...