Should Democrats Be Sent To Reform School?

Democrats control Congress, right? They are supposed to be able to ram through their agenda, right? So--WTF?

From the Washington Post's Ezra Klein:

Health reform is, I think it fair to say, in danger right now. The news out of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee was bad. The Congressional Budget Office had scored a partial bill and the result was a total fiasco. But the news out of the Finance Committee is much, much worse.

Put simply, the Finance Committee wanted its bill to cost $1 trillion over 10 years. The CBO returned an early estimate to the panel on Tuesday night: $1.6 trillion over 10 years. The specifics of the estimate have not been made public. But the final number changed everything. Max Baucus, the chairman of the committee, pushed markup back behind the July 4th recess. He has promised to get the bill below $1 trillion over 10 years.

That's very dangerous.

It is, for one thing, an arbitrary target. Why $1 trillion? Why not $1.3 trillion or, for that matter, $700 billion? And it's an arbitrary financing target. It's not $1 trillion with coverage expanded to 40 million people. Just $1 trillion.

There are two ways to make a $1.6 trillion bill a $1 trillion bill. The first is to do less reform. The second is to do more reform. That sounds confusing. But it shouldn't be: In health care, the less you change, the more it costs.

The rest of Klein's piece is here.

What about a public option, you ask? Sam Stein on HuffPo reminds us that if President Obama pals around with friends like Tom Daschle, does he really need GOP Confederates as his enemies?

The man once slated to head Barack Obama's health care system overhaul is now coming out against one of the chief components of that effort.

Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle said on Wednesday that the Obama White House would likely have to scrap a public option for health insurance coverage if it wanted to get the votes needed to pass systematic change.

"We've come too far and gained too much momentum for our efforts to fail over disagreement on one single issue," the Senator and one-time HHS Secretary nominee said, according to ABC News.

In coming out against a public plan, Daschle adds kindling to an already roaring debate on health care reform. On Thursday morning, former Vermont Governor Howard Dean repeated the mantra that you cannot have effective legislation if it does not include a public option. At the White House on Wednesday, several state legislators who had met with current HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius argued the same point.

Certainly, the public seems to be weighed in Dean's favor. An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll conducted on Wednesday night showed that 76 percent of respondents wanted a choice between a public option for insurance coverage and private providers.

So are Democrats going to shy away from the bold action--and, yes, initial expense--needed to reform the most wasteful, least-comprehensive health care system in the industrialized world? Are Frank Luntz's talking points helping GOP Confederates control the debate? Will a public option be on the table or out the door? Will insurance companies, Big Pharma and the AMA get their way, yet again?

There are almost 50 million of us anxiously awaiting answers to those questions, and we are sick of D.C. sell-outs.

UPDATE: According to this, Tom Daschle might be the biggest sell-out of all.