Health Care Reform In Perspective

TW: The very tedious, vacuous and frustrating process by which health care reform is being contemplated can be depressing. I still think a bill will get done, it will be deeply flawed my only hope is that it will be better than nothing despite the powerful interests aligned against most of it. There are very legitimate conservative arguments which should be integrated into the bill but for the most part the Republicans are chosen to focus on fear mongering without raising them as suggestions. To suggest actually actionable measures would be to create an environment of bi-partisanship which they clearly wish to avoid in favor of cutting Obama's knees out from under him and set the stage for a 2010 comeback.

Putting all of this to the side, Begala makes some good points about where this reform effort compares to the 1930's effort to pass social security.

From Paul Begala in the WaPo:
"I think my fellow progressives ought to give Max Baucus and other members of the Senate Finance Committee a little breathing room as they labor to produce a health-care bill that can garner enough votes to pass the Senate.

Progressive politics is, in my view, a movement, not a monument. We cannot achieve perfection in this life, and if that is our goal we will always be frustrated. The right has far more modest goals: At every turn, its members seek to advance their power and protect privilege. I've never seen the Republican right oppose a tax cut for the rich because it wasn't generous enough; I've never seen them oppose a set of loopholes for corporate lobbyists because one industry or another wasn't included. The left, on the other hand, too often prefers a glorious defeat to an incremental victory.

...No self-respecting liberal today would support Franklin Roosevelt's original Social Security Act. It excluded agricultural workers -- a huge part of the economy in 1935, and one in which Latinos have traditionally worked. It excluded domestic workers, which included countless African Americans and immigrants. It did not cover the self-employed, or state and local government employees, or railroad employees, or federal employees or employees of nonprofits. It didn't even cover the clergy. FDR's Social Security Act did not have benefits for dependents or survivors. It did not have a cost-of-living increase. If you became disabled and couldn't work, you got nothing from Social Security.

If that version of Social Security were introduced today, progressives like me would call it cramped, parsimonious, mean-spirited and even racist. Perhaps it was all those things. But it was also a start. And for 74 years we have built on that start. We added more people to the winner's circle: farm workers and domestic workers and government workers. We extended benefits to the children of working men and women who died. We granted benefits to the disabled. We mandated annual cost-of-living adjustments. And today Social Security is the bedrock of our progressive vision of the common good.

Health care may follow that same trajectory. It would be a bitter disappointment if health reform did not include a public option. A public plan that keeps the insurance companies honest is, I believe, the right policy and the right politics. I believe subsidies should extend to as many Americans as need help and that the hard-earned health benefits of middle-class Americans should not be taxed. I believe insurer abuses like the preexisting-condition rule should be outlawed. The question is not whether I or other progressives will support a health-reform bill that includes everything we want but, rather, whether we will support a bill that doesn't..."