Back in the first few months of the current administration, when I was writing piece after piece urging the new administration to adopt a more aggressive economic policy, what I had very much in my mind — and wrote about on a few occasions — was the possibility of a sort of political economy trap. If unemployment continued to rise, I feared, Congress wouldn’t draw the right conclusion — that we needed more stimulus. Instead, the verdict would be that Obama’s economic policies weren’t working, so we needed to do less. And high unemployment would also lead to Democratic electoral losses, further undermining the ability to act (since the fact is that today’s GOP is the party of economic ignorance). The result would be a persistently depressed economy, and a fading out of Obama’s promise.
And the same thing is happening with health care.
Liberals have such low expectations these days that they're actually celebrating a health care reform bill that might include a "public option" ...but probably one with "triggers" or an "opt-out" clause. Either way Harry Reid's bill looks pretty darn crappy but liberals are somehow ecstatic.
Even if health reform passes with some form of "public option" most of us are still looking at insufficient coverage, and increasing costs for the forseeable future all to the continued benefit of the goulish death-profiteers in an insurance industry left largely intact.
The result of this is that we're going to end up with a health reform that not only doesn't do what it needs to do but also discredits the whole idea of health care reform for another generation. And all of this is because Obama has been doing it wrong from day one. And doing it wrong is worse than not doing it at all.
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