Jane Hamsher with a perceptive and profoundly depressing post on how it all works:
People make a mistake when they think the battle for health care reform is about ideology, because it’s not. It’s about who controls K Street and the cash that flows from it, which could fund a 2010 GOP resurgenece — or not. …
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And it seems to have worked. John Boehner recently wrote a scathing letter to Billy Tauzin saying that he had “betrayed” the drugmakers by failing to align himself with the Republicans. The GOP needs the money of PhRMA and other disgruntled businesses to fund its 2010 war chest. Just as it was during the bank bailout, the goal of the White House was clear: more important than saving the financial system was keeping the financial institutions happy and stop them from financing Republicans. …
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The American Hospitals Association deal was signed on July 8. The hosptals want higher medicare reimbursement rates for rural providers. On July 15, the Blue Dogs threaten to block health care reform — if it doesn’t increase reimbursement rates to rural providers.
And suddenly, the hospitals are spending $12 million running positive ads about health care reform with PhRMA and the AMA.
Mike Allen said earlier this week that “this weekend’s comments by White House officials simply acknowledged the long-obvious reality that the idea of a government-run insurance plan was partly a bargaining chip.”
If you look at the cat-and-mouse game played between the Democrats and the Republicans, support expressed by the President for a “public plan” meant “don’t you dare.” A commitment that the bill will be “bipartisan” (since the GOP would never agree to one) was a signal that there would be no public plan.
The White House never cared about getting Republican votes — it cared about keeping the Republicans from peeling off the dollars of stakeholders like PhRMA.
Third party, please. This is how the Democrats betray the public trust, thinking that the key is to play the game better than the Republicans - rather than curtailing the game itself.
