"Democrats oppose a public option as unfair to private insurers"

Now explain to me again the difference between Democrats and Republicans?? I always thought Democrats sided with actual individual people and Republicans sided with businesses...

It's frustrating, to a certain extent, to think those in the "center" would be reluctant to support a public option. It's hard to imagine a more mainstream policy idea than one embraced by three out of four Americans -- including half of self-identified Republicans.

For that matter, a public option would be part of a policy premised on choice and competition in the marketplace, which in turn cuts costs. These are, the last time I looked, the kind of tenets "centrists" are supposed to drool over.

Yes, but...they aren't "centrists" so much as they are "corporatists". The so-called "Blue Dogs" represent the rump of the DLC, and their constiuency was never the voters. Hence their overweening concern for a few hundred or thousand well-paid insurance company employees and shareholders over the almost 50 million people with no health care.

Jennifer's right. For clarity, the Blue Dogs should be renamed the Blue-blooded Butt Sniffers.

Dr Ensign, your neutering and spading of the Blue Dogs has, apparently, worked. However, they are past due for their distemper and rabies shots.

Democrats oppose a public option as unfair to private insurers

this is stuff that makes my skin crawl, and starts my day sour. God damn these soulless cretons. They are on the side of the vampires.

This is what happens when people start screaming 'PURITY TROLL!' whenever someone complains about congress or tries to hold people accountable. You have barely-liberal 'centrists' treating every opponent as though they were being intellectually honest.

'Centrists' aren't 'centrists' because they are in the center of public opinion. They are 'centrists' because it sounds better than saying they are 'corrupt'. Anybody who actually thinks they give a flying fuck about saving money is a complete fucking moron, and nobody should take their political prognostications seriously.

"Blue Dog" is a euphemism for corporate stooge...just like "republican". Average Americans are not their constituents - they're nothing more than annoying twits pols have to appeal to once to get the key to the golden Kingdom of Plutocracy.

Centrism today is defined as anything to the right of whatever the progressives want. It isn't defined by any sort of actual guiding principals, and is basically reactionary.

The idea of a free market is that the players in it respond to market forces. This is supposed to be why certain people, Republicans and other Dogs, accept the idea of a free market as equivalent to Holy Writ.

Back in the beginning of the Clinton presidency there was a clear signal to the market that there needed to be a change. It is now more than fifteen years later and so far we have seen nothing. One of our choices now is to dump the whole thing and do it completely by government decision. This has worked well under some circumstances.

Another choice is to send another signal. That would be the public health option. It would be still within the rules of the free market game because it is providing competition, but it would put pressure on the insurance companies to get their act together.

Now one response to that is that insurance company EXECUTIVES will decide that they can't compete without "earning" something more closely related to what they are worth and so they get out of the game altogether and go into something else, selling narcotics, running scams, something else that will provide the obscene amounts of money that they have come to expect as their due. But there will be enough people with knowledge of insurance left to actually run real insurance companies and who have a certain amount of integrity and decency. These people will fill the vacancies left by the crooks that are presently in charge of insurance companies and we will continue to get the benefits from a business run through competition and not through cartels.

many conservative Democrats oppose a public option as unfair to private insurers.

The primary beneficiaries of any health care reform (or any government policy) must be the public. Anyone who thinks otherwise doesn't belong in Congress.

"All politics is local."

Follow the money. There is plenty of probable cause to tap the phones of certain politicians whose behavior can best be explained as cash for votes aligned with the insurance and medical interests. In fact, this should be standing policy on all lawmakers. More damage is done to this country by those elected to serve than could ever be done by terrorists.

It's hard to imagine a more mainstream policy idea than one embraced by three out of four Americans -- including half of self-identified Republicans.

can you say "overton window"? as in, the window has moved way Right, which is why the squishy center in DC is so far to the Right. When said center is not in thrall to the same corporate interests that all of congress is in thrall to. A diarist over at KOS described it as "a parliament of whores" and that sounds accurate, given current news of the sausage-making now under way--if I can indulge a grotesque mix of metaphors.

This has happened so many times now -- Congressional or administration officials make noises about watering down health care reform and then reverse course the very next day -- that there's only one possible explanation: these politicians are instantly getting an earful from pissed-off constituents and have to back down. All the campaign money in the world from the health insurance industry doesn't mean squat if people aren't going to vote for you.

Good for us. This is how democracy works. Keep up the pressure. It's claiming that ordinary citizens have no power over Congress even after several demonstrations to the contrary that's dangerous.

Democrats oppose a public option as unfair to private insurers

What they are really saying is "I don't want to lose the big contributions"
Don't they realoze with so MANY voters wanting a public option they will be voted OUT regardless of their war chests.