All Life Is Problem Solving

Of course, all of us have heard about one of the President’s favorite maxims, “the perfect is the enemy of the good,” with its implication that practicality most often calls for us to forego our attempts to reach a hard to achieve or impossible ideal, in favor of acting to achieve a good result that, […]

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For some time now, I’ve been hearing what Kip Sullivan calls the “yes, but” position on health care reform. That position says roughly that yes, Medicare for All, is the best available solution for the problems besetting our health insurance system; but, unfortunately, Medicare for All is not “on the table” right now, so we […]

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In an earlier post on fixing Obama’s message machine, I argued that his primary problem was one of content. The vague public option and insurance exchange idea associated with the plan isn’t something that people easily understand. And progressive cadres that do understand it don’t love it because many of them see “Medicare for All” […]

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This post is a comment on an exchange with Jason Rosenbaum appearing as replies to ralphbon’s blog post entitled “Seniors Already Have A Public Option. Does It Keep Private Insurers Honest?” Here is the exchange: LetsGetItDone: “ralphbon, Thanks for a very good analysis. Jason, in view of Paul Krugman’s recent analysis of the health insurance […]

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This will be a pretty short one. First, health care reform proposals that offer a “public option” alternative do not provide “socialized medicine.” That is, all medical care in such proposed systems would be provided by private sector Doctors, hospitals, and other other health care institutions. Government in such a plan doesn’t do any medicine. […]

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This one is an Open Letter to my Congressman, James Moran (D-VA). Dear Jim, I feel entitled to address you by your first name because you’ve been my Representative since 1991 and I’ve voted for you in every election since then. I think the issue of health care reform is where most Americans live. Those […]

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Well, maybe not “over” as in “there will be no legislation passed in this session that contains the phrase “public option.” Perhaps there will still be legislation that has a provision with that label. But it will bear no resemblance to Jacob Hacker’s original design for a public option plan, and it won’t provide a […]

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Last night, it occurred to me that the public option idea is a disingenuous approach to health care reform. Here’s the argument. Talking to other progressives, I’ve noticed that they all freely say that single payer will work better than a public option, and that it is the best alternative they know. And then they […]

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Why is there “a free lunch” in Congress? Why are there 180 Republican Amendments for the House Health care Reform legislation, but no guaranteed Republican votes? Why should members be able to get amendments to bills proposed in committee accepted without any commitment from themselves? What kind of negotiation process is that? Why doesn’t the […]

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For a long time now, progressives have been looking for lines in the sand. They’ve been trying to get progressive members of Congress to commit to vote no on any health care reform bill that doesn’t include a robust public option, and they’ve also been after the President to clearly state his unwillingness to sign […]

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