Is this turkey even edible?

I would have to be paid a lot to follow all the zigs and zags of the depressing healthcare ‘reform’ debate, but yesterday’s rejection of the public option by a Senate panel looked like really bad news. Five Democrats and all the Republicans voted to bury it.

It’s amazing to see that no matter how badly the Democrats are smacked around by the teabag/You Lie! party, a substantial minority will always break ranks and cave to the monied interests. Then they will be gently massaged by reporters as ‘moderates’ and their views aired endlessly.

I have a sinking feeling about the whole exercise and fear that any attempt to force people into the skin game known as ‘health insurance’ as currently constituted is likely to bomb hugely even in the short run. As someone wrote recently, whether you call it a ‘fee’, a ‘tax’ or nothing at all, legislating the purchase of an expensive product is going to feel like shit to people who can’t afford it even if they eventually get a tax subsidy to ease the pain.

Obama may end up with the worst of all possible outcomes: presiding over a boondoggle for the insurance industry (confirming our bank-bailout impression of him as being in the back pocket of high finance), obtaining no real change in how insurance profiteers poison doctor-patient relations, costing us our left nut singly and collectively, and reinforcing the wild-eyed reactionaries’ paranoid fantasies.

All this in exchange for the laudable but dubious goal of ending the worst abuses of the current system—which, without a public option, may fail anyway as the insurance companies find ways to subvert the new laws.

In conclusion, I am open to the argument that may soon emerge from House Democrats led by Raul Grijalva of Arizona and the Black Caucus, among others, that Max Baucus’s Montana turkey is worse than nothing. It will be interesting to see how Obama’s enforcers would react if there were a threat from that wing to bury the whole sorry animal and how long all the White House posturing about bipartisanship and mutual respect for the other side’s opinions would survive.