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I'm delighted that the Sentinel took up some of what I said about what Gregg said in their editorial today. But I'm afraid that in this case my affection for snark needlessly obscured the point I was after, which is really a simple one. So let me lay it out as clearly as I can:
I'm more or less agnostic on the question of requiring people to have insurance. It was, however, one of the more engaging policy episodes in the long Obama-Clinton nomination battle, and I'm glad I was there to watch it unfold.
When I took our Senior Senator to task, it was because he is so dreadfully opposed to real health care reform that he is willing to become Hillary for President '08 and federally mandate everyone to be insured.
To say it another way: He's climbing so far out on the ledge of his own GOPer principles because it's the only way he knows how to avoid a public option.
Judd Gregg knows a viable public option will ultimately mean the end of the private health care status quo. He knows that if Barack Obama and the Democrats deliver the beginning of the end of the health care catastrophe, it will eventually become as cherished as FDR's Social Security.
In terms of policy, Judd Gregg (and Hillary Clinton) may well be right to demand an insurance requirement of all Americans. But the senator is not, in my opinion, making this argument on policy grounds. It's a Hail Mary fourth quarter political calculation to avoid the expansion of government's role in the delivery of quality, affordable health care, something nearly every other industrialized nation on earth has. One last shot to avoid the successful accomplishment of this by the political party that, in his lifetime, has consistently shown more regard for the less well-to-do than his Grand Old one.
I would be willing to give Senator Gregg a pass on his remarks for an insurance requirement, or even praise, were it not for this one ineluctable consequence of his plan:
If every American were forced to buy insurance from the current private health care oligarchy, it would result in an even worse situation than what we now have. One way or another we will be facing some scenario where we are funneling public money into private companies who will saddle the formerly uninsured with barely affordable slow-motion indebtedness junk insurance. And why shouldn't they? They are for-profit companies that have no obligation to the Commonweal, but a significant obligation to the bottom line.
So, thanks but no thanks, Senator. Elections have consequences; We the People gave Junior Senator "Stop Complaining About Health Care" an early retirement to a life of enrichment through Boards. We've got 60 Democrats. Let's get Byrd and Kennedy in the same room with the other 58, get it past cloture, let the Landrieus and Feinsteins and other David Broders vote against it, and make darn sure we are 51 or more to pass on health care reform with a viable public option.
This is the moment we have been waiting for. Judd Gregg knows this. Do we?
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