Optional

So Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is putting the bill on the healthcare reform bill on floor with a public option. The key is that it is the "opt-out" option which will enable red states (most likely, if any) to close off that avenue for lower health insurance premiums to their citizens. As Jane Hamsher wisely says, the devil is in the details, and we'll see if a governor or legislature alone can opt-out a state. One would think a referendum would be an important if not deciding element, but as the traditional South continues to marginalize itself and it's rump Republican Party, this option let's them do as they will, so be it should it pass.

While the final votes in both houses have not yet been tallied, conferenced, and tallied again, it looks like momentum is on the side of this opt-out option proposed just three weeks ago. Here's a hopefully ironic list of pundits who declared the public option dead weeks ago (much as many declared Obama a lost candidate over and over again), and here's Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) on how the White House was prevailed upon to drop the Snowe-y triggers and go opt-out. All in all, if the public option survives in any useful way, it's the progressives who need to be thanked for standing firm.

From a political point of view, I say that the Democratic Congress and Democratic President, two Houses and an Executive branch all won by strong margins in the last election (last two, actually) have a duty to bring the very legislative promises that got them elected to a floor vote, as intact as possible. This is what democracy is all about, and if the voting public disagrees down the line they can vote in another party or other leaders. Elections have consequences -- even stolen ones decided by daddy's Supreme Court appointees.

And, on the brass tacks political side, Ezra Klein points out why Reid was savvy to include the public option and what may happen, win or lose:

This accomplishes two things for Reid. First, as Frates's unnamed lobbyist points out, he can lose this vote but credibly claim that he went to bat for a pretty good compromise on the public option. Second, it creates consequences for those who want to vote against the public option. Rather than killing the proposal in a back room, moderates who won't vote for cloture will actually have to vote against cloture. That makes them a target in their next election, and ensures a lot of harassment from the left. Reid is, in other words, making it harder -- not impossible, but harder -- for them to oppose the public option. Procedurally, it's a big win for public option advocates.

Here's to victory without a lot of sneaky nastiness stuck in whatever final bill passes. Bottom line is that any U.S. healthcare system that currently wastes $800 billion per year needs reform, ASAP.