Who's on the Side of the American People?
The upcoming debate over health care bills in Congress should be a clear test of the mettle of the Democratic Party, which swept to an electoral majority last fall. Make no mistake about it. The chance for meaningful health care reform may either live or die with Barak Obama's skills as a leader. As I predicted in a recent blog post, by taking the single-payer health plan concept off the negotiating table at the start, the Democratic leadership has turned the "public option" component of the administration's plan into a convenient target for Republicans to chip away at. The operative question is: Have the Dems learned their lesson from the Republican rejections of the stimulus package, the Obama budget and other critical votes where the GOP overwhelmingly refused to offer any support to the administration?
While it is understandable that the White House would prefer a bi-partisan agreement on the shape of the most important legislation since the civil rights bills of the 1960s, there is little to indicate that such cooperation would be forthcoming without sacrificing the public option alternative. GOP leadership has explicitly stated their opposition to the public option by declaring it a "non-starter."
It is imperative that the Democrats should be prepared to move ahead on their plan without Republican participation. It is clear that unless the administration and the Democratic Party take advantage of what is assuredly the best opportunity for real health care reform in a generation, they will go down in history as having failed the American people when strong leadership was most needed.
The upcoming debate over health care bills in Congress should be a clear test of the mettle of the Democratic Party, which swept to an electoral majority last fall. Make no mistake about it. The chance for meaningful health care reform may either live or die with Barak Obama's skills as a leader. As I predicted in a recent blog post, by taking the single-payer health plan concept off the negotiating table at the start, the Democratic leadership has turned the "public option" component of the administration's plan into a convenient target for Republicans to chip away at. The operative question is: Have the Dems learned their lesson from the Republican rejections of the stimulus package, the Obama budget and other critical votes where the GOP overwhelmingly refused to offer any support to the administration?
While it is understandable that the White House would prefer a bi-partisan agreement on the shape of the most important legislation since the civil rights bills of the 1960s, there is little to indicate that such cooperation would be forthcoming without sacrificing the public option alternative. GOP leadership has explicitly stated their opposition to the public option by declaring it a "non-starter."
It is imperative that the Democrats should be prepared to move ahead on their plan without Republican participation. It is clear that unless the administration and the Democratic Party take advantage of what is assuredly the best opportunity for real health care reform in a generation, they will go down in history as having failed the American people when strong leadership was most needed.
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