Health Care Reform: Dual Hypocrisies

It's worth pointing out dual hypocrisies on both sides of the health care debate. I will start with the most obvious example.

Republicans

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Their stance: The current health reform bills do not lower premiums. In fact, they raise premiums.

Proposed solution: Let's start over and commit to half measures instead. That will surely lower premiums.

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If February's health care summit revealed anything about the Republican party's misguided stance on reform, it is this.  Even if you ignore the facts in the Congressional Budget Office report that both the Senate and House bills would reduce the federal deficit by a considerable amount while lowering premiums for most Americans, their rebuke fails to note just how much the legislation would prevent costs from rising. 

This simply reveals the Republican strategy for reform: delay, delay, delay until it goes away.

Democrats

More subtle, but equally puzzling, is the lack of Democratic leadership for full-fledged reform; namely, one that includes a public option as a competitor to insurance companies that will drive down premiums.

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Their stance, before reconciliation talks: We support the public option but lack the 60 vote majority to include it.

Now that only 50 votes are needed to pass reform: Public option? What public option?

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Now that reconciliation seems inevitable, where did the public option go? The White House has very subtly left it behind months ago. But even as President Obama calls for forging ahead without bipartisan support, there is hardly a rallying cry by Democrats for the public option.

All this talk of Republicans abusing the filibuster may just have been an excuse for their lack of follow through. At best, it highlights the glaring hole in Washington's Democratic leadership; at worst, that they are intentionally deceiving the public into thinking Republicans are the only ones in the way of reform.