They'd Still Be Trying to Kill Wyden-Bennett

by Tim Foley

categories: Enemies of Reform, National Health Exchange, Obama and Congress

Published August 08, 2009 @ 03:46PM PT

On an episode of the MSNBC show Morning Meeting, host Dylan Ratigan spent some time waving around a copy of the Healthy Americans Act, a Senate bill for universal health care proposed by Democratic Senator Ron Wyden and Republican Senator Bob Bennett.  Within the context of the continued stalemate in Max Baucus’ bipartisan “coalition of the willing” and the minority of aggressive protestors swarming Congressional town halls, he kept asking his guests, “Who would be against this?”  Prompted by an Op-Ed in the Washington Post by most of the co-signers, we’ve had several days of chatter that we wouldn’t be in the same spot if we had decided to go with something like Wyden-Bennett.  This has been at least partially mentioned by some of my favorite writers, including Ezra Klein and Bob Laszewski.

Forgive me, but I just don’t see it.

This is nothing against the policies of Wyden-Bennett, which I summarized in one of the first posts I wrote for this site.  If implemented, it would phase out employer-based insurance over two years entirely, require companies to replace the money they spent on benefits in the form of higher wages, and replace it with state-based exchanges where anyone could buy a comprehensive plan, receive subsidies if they could not afford one, and have the security of new insurance regulations to outlaw the most abusive practices.  Co-signers on the bill are evenly split between Republicans and Democrats, so it has the fabled bipartisanship smell (second only to “new car smell” inside the Beltway).  Moreover the Congressional Budget Office determined that it would be revenue neutral in just a few years – it would take in as much as it gave out.  It’s an intriguing idea, which would be loads better than what our current, unreformed system looks like.

But if we had chucked Obama’s campaign plan from the outset, it’s hard to see the politics being very different.  For one thing, chucking a president’s campaign plan has consequences of its own – so much of our current progress has derived from a president willing to use his charisma and the bully pulpit to make the case again and again.  The minute a president – any president, of either party – deviates from something he ran on so aggressively, that becomes the story.  ("Read my lips, no new taxes" springs to mind).  For another, it’s not clear that the co-signers on Wyden-Bennett actually mean it.  Famously, Arlen Specter went on Meet the Press to denounce most of the moving parts of Wyden-Bennett – removing the employer tax exclusion on benefits – before saying he supported the bill.  Sen. Lindsey Graham admits, “There are some people on the Wyden-Bennett bill who are probably there for political cover, because they need to be for something.”  There’s zero consideration in the House.  And, to be blunt, because Wyden-Bennett would be a much bigger change than the current plan in Congress, you likely see the same special-interest-driven opposition from small businesses, employers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and others.  Republicans would still have incentive to see health care reform fail as a political consideration, regardless of which plan failed.  All of which means it would likely face similar entrenched resistance in Congress.

And then there’s the street theater.  To suggest that the outrage we’re seeing from a vocal minority is in any way related to the bill in front in Congress is not listening to the objections.  It doesn’t take much imagination to see the provisions in Wyden-Bennett being fodder for an angry fringe group.  For one thing, the “government takeover of health care” metaphor would still exist.  Columnist Steven Pearlstein wrote of the Health Exchange in the House bill, “While the government will take a more active role in regulating the insurance market and increase its spending for health care, that hardly amounts to the kind of government-run system that critics conjure up when they trot out that oh-so-clever line about the Department of Motor Vehicles being in charge of your colonoscopy.”  Nevertheless, that’s how it’s being described.  How much worse would Wyden-Bennett be when we’d all be in an Exchange, not just people without insurance through their employer?  Why would subsidies for those who cannot afford health insurance be “socialism” under the House bill but not be “socialism” under Wyden-Bennett?  (Neither one of them, of course, would be socialism, but that’s hardly the point.)  Which of the preposterous "freedoms" as outlined by Fortune Magazine as being lost under health care reform would be preserved under Wyden-Bennett?  None.

I’m not trying to suggest these scary stories are valid – they’d still be complete lies.  But anyone thinking Wyden-Bennett would be politically easier, either inside the Beltway or outside, doesn't seem to be listening.

(Photo credit:  Amber Rhea on Flickr.)