Thursday, October 29, 2009

Ezra Klein offers an interesting point on the opt-out plan in the Senate's health care bill:
My prediction is that the public option, if it passes, will be much like that. States wouldn't be able to opt out till 2014. By 2014, we'll be arguing over all manner of things, but a public insurance option for the small sliver of the population with access to the health insurance exchanges will be one of those things. In that scenario, where there's very little controversy over the public option, I don't believe that state legislatures and governors are going to go to the trouble of rejecting it, and I don't believe that anyone will manage to reinvigorate the controversy around it. The controversy around the public option is an expression of the controversy around Barack Obama's presidency in general, and health-care reform in particular. Once those issues are essentially settled, the underlying policy isn't going to hold people's attention.
I didn't know there was a five-year waiting period for states to opt-out. This accomplishes two things: 1) it gives Obama and the Democrats enough time either to succeed or hang themselves, and 2) it takes Republican anger and political gamesmanship out of the picture to see how things develop. And in truth, this is all Obama asks for -- time to see if things work. We have sat for eight years in Afghanistan waiting for things to work (they haven't), and we took a similarly long time in Iraq (jury's still out). Seems to me that it's in the country's interest to see how things go with something that has the potential of saving American lives in a tangible way.

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