There are some writers who, when they write an opinion I patently disagree with, cause me to pause and re-evaluate what I had previously thought. One of those authors is Nate Silver of 538, so when I saw a clip of his article on Ted Goddard’s Political Wire in a post on why liberals should back the health care bill, I listened.
“For any ‘progressive’ who is concerned about the inequality of wealth, income and opportunity in America, this bill would be an absolutely monumental achievement. The more compelling critique, rather, is that the bill would fail to significantly ‘bend the cost curve’. I don’t dismiss that criticism at all, and certainly the insertion of a public option would have helped at the margins. But fundamentally, that is a critique that would traditionally be associated with the conservative side of the debate, as it ultimately goes to mounting deficits in the wake of expanded government entitlements.”
It’s worth saying that most of us on the left have put almost our entire stock in the public option. We’ve basically said that any bill lacking a PO is useless, it’s not enough, it doesn’t do anything worth doing. But there certainly many other facets to the health care system, and they wouldn’t all be fixed with a public option. So maybe Nate, Ezra, and John are right. The bill isn’t perfect, but it’s as big a reform as we could conceivably hope for now.
Personally, I’m hoping Ezra Klein is right that this keeps the door open for future reforms.
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