Dancing the Public Option

For the past several months, President Barack Obama has been going in circles on whether health care reform must include a so-called "public option" for government-run insurance. Obama has said he supports a public option, but he has also said that it's not essential to reform. He wants to sign a bill that has it, but presumably would not veto a bill that doesn't.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada tried to give a bit more clarity to the situation yesterday, signaling, again, that legislation headed for the Senate floor will include an option for government-run health insurance coverage, though details had yet to be finalized.

With that, he apparently took it upon himself to decide between competing proposals by different Senate committees. But he still has to accomplish other near-impossible tasks: he must hold the support of liberals who want a more expansive public option; he must hold the support of moderates who are reluctant to accept any public option; and he must make sure that whatever comes out of the Senate is progressive enough to be melded together with the House's more liberal version.

Reid also knows that, in including a public option, he is probably sure to lose the one Republican vote he might have had — that of Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine.

That means Reid will need the votes of all 60 Democrats — liberals and moderates — to block a Republican filibuster. That will require some moves by Reid worthy of his own appearance on "Dancing with the Stars."

Reid's solution — an opt-out clause that would allow states to decline to participate in whatever public option Congress comes up with — really establishes only one thing: the more that Democrats try to finesse the issue, the more they succeed in making hash out of the whole notion of reform.

This editorial page has long opposed a public option as an unworkable, never-ending drain on the public treasury that poses the likelihood of an ultimate government takeover of the private health insurance industry, meaning a reduced quality of care for the majority of people now insured through their employers. But at least when this process began it was clear what the other side was proposing and why. Those who favored a public option on the assumption that it would make health insurance more affordable for Americans who lack it at least they had principles. Now it seems that Senate leaders just want to get a bill through — any bill — in order to say they passed something.

That's not reform. It's an abdication of leadership. If you think our health care system needs work, just take a look at Washington, D.C. This whole exercise has been another reminder of how dysfunctional the political system can be when lawmakers lose their way.

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