Ari Melber argues that with last week's appellate ruling against health care reform's individual mandate, it might have been better, in retrospect, to expanded Medicare, which was one of the options being discussed until Lieberman was permitted to shoot it down. (I say "permitted" because the President saved Lieberman's behind when Dems were thinking of not permitting him to caucus with them, and what did the President get in return? Not just that, but when has Lieberman ever been punished for any of his bs moves like when he killed Medicare expansion?)
Transcript of video, after the jump.
Last week, an appeals court invalidated the core of President Obama's health care law.
This may sound familiar, because several federal judges have already ruled on the Affordable Care Act. Some have upheld it. Others say the law is unconstitutional. The Supreme Court will probably have the last word.
But there's more to this story. The legal trouble facing the health care act reveals some unexpected risks of blind compromise as a legislative strategy – and it discredits this nonsense media narrative that every compromise is automatically pragmatic.
Back when the health care law passed, many experts touted it as a "grand compromise." Pundits said that liberals didn't get exactly what they wanted – a larger government role in covering people. And all those tea party town halls did not achieve their aim – which was to kill any bill.
Now, however, we are getting a clearer picture of how it’s all shaping up.
Remember, the liberal proposals were essentially to beef up government health care. A public option would create voluntary, public plans to compete with private insurance. Expanding Medicare would have covered millions of Americans.
When Democrats backed down, however, the so-called compromise actually changed the fundamental approach to reforming health care. The final bill only relied on private, corporate insurance -- and it forced people to buy that insurance, in order to widen the market and cut costs.
Still, not a single Republican voted for it. After it passed, they rushed to court arguing that the law was unconstitutional -- because of the insurance mandate!
This point has gotten lost in most of the coverage. Think about it.
It is precisely the anti-government, business-friendly model -- designed as a compromise -- that conservatives are now using in order to destroy the health care act in court.
Meanwhile, those discarded proposals for government health care would never face this kind of legal limbo. They are based on rock-solid precedents:
The government already provides health care. Right now. To 25 percent of the nation.
Yet to this day, political commentators still talk about how President Obama was pragmatic on health care, while liberals were somehow unrealistic. Back on planet earth, it is the private sector compromise plan that's hanging by a thread in conservative courts. And it is the government health care plans, the ones favored by all those liberals, bloggers and policy wonks, that remain both popular and legally bulletproof.
No one knows what the Court will do. And Democrats made their choice to experiment with private sector solutions instead of building on the New Deal’s tested, popular government programs.
But what’s clear to me is that Democratic compromises made under the guise of practicality may turn out to be impractical and self-defeating.
