I didn’t watch President Barack Obama’s health care summit today, but I wanted to post this thread for people to discuss the spectacle and the state of play for health care reform. Blog for Iowa liveblogged the proceedings, as did FireDogLake (in four parts).

Senator Tom Harkin got good reviews for his comments at the summit today but disappointed a lot of Democrats yesterday by saying the public health insurance option can’t pass this year. Harkin repeatedly promised during 2009 that Congress would approve a health care bill with a public option. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is still advocating for the public option, but clearly there is no hope. Glenn Greenwald wrote an excellent piece at Salon about “the Democratic Party’s deceitful game” (click over and read the whole thing):

   Progressives:  We want a public option!

   Democrats/WH:  We agree with you totally!  Unfortunately, while we have 50 votes for it, we just don’t have 60, so we can’t have it.  Gosh darn that filibuster rule.  

   Progressives:  But you can use reconciliation like Bush did so often, and then you only need 50 votes.

   Filbuster reform advocates/Obama loyalists:  Hey progressives, don’t be stupid!  Be pragmatic.  It’s not realistic or Serious to use reconciliation to pass health care reform.  None of this their fault.  It’s the fault of the filibuster.  The White House wishes so badly that it could pass all these great progressive bills, but they’re powerless, and they just can’t get 60 votes to do it.  

   [Month later]

   Progressives:  Hey, great!  Now that you’re going to pass the bill through reconciliation after all, you can include the public option that both you and we love, because you only need 50 votes, and you’ve said all year you have that!

   Democrats/WH:  No.  We don’t have 50 votes for that (look at Jay Rockefeller).  Besides, it’s not the right time for the public option.  The public option only polls at 65%, so it might make our health care bill — which polls at 35% — unpopular.  Also, the public option and reconciliation are too partisan, so we’re going to go ahead and pass our industry-approved bill instead . . . on a strict party line vote.

I have to give credit to Bleeding Heartland user ragbrai08, who called this one a long time ago.

Meanwhile, the Republicans made one bogus argument after another today. David Waldman blows up some of their ridiculous claims about the Senate reconciliation process, which is used to avoid a filibuster.

Ezra Klein reminds you why selling insurance across state lines (the centerpiece of the Republican “plan”) is a terrible idea:

Conservatives want the opposite: They want insurers to be able to cluster in one state, follow that state’s regulations and sell the product to everyone in the country. In practice, that means we will have a single national insurance standard. But that standard will be decided by South Dakota. Or, if South Dakota doesn’t give the insurers the freedom they want, it’ll be decided by Wyoming. Or whoever.

This is exactly what happened in the credit card industry, which is regulated in accordance with conservative wishes. In 1980, Bill Janklow, the governor of South Dakota, made a deal with Citibank: If Citibank would move its credit card business to South Dakota, the governor would literally let Citibank write South Dakota’s credit card regulations. You can read Janklow’s recollections of the pact here.

Citibank wrote an absurdly pro-credit card law, the legislature passed it, and soon all the credit card companies were heading to South Dakota. And that’s exactly what would happen with health-care insurance. The industry would put its money into buying the legislature of a small, conservative, economically depressed state. The deal would be simple: Let us write the regulations and we’ll bring thousands of jobs and lots of tax dollars to you. Someone will take it. The result will be an uncommonly tiny legislature in an uncommonly small state that answers to an uncommonly conservative electorate that will decide what insurance will look like for the rest of the nation.

Jonathan Cohn discusses the same problem here.

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