Public Option, Health-Care and Opposing Obama

Public Option, Health Care and Opposing Obama

By Fubara David-West


President Obama and the Democrats should handle the ongoing political and legislative battle over health-care reform like battle-tested generals, who know the difference between tactics and strategy, and understand that you do not negotiate away your strategic objective for tactical advantage. Otherwise, they will all deserve to be met with a deluge of political rejection in two years and in four, which should give all of the political advantages the Democrats now have, including controlling the White House and the Congressional chambers, to the Republicans. The

Democrats must act as if they understand the meaning of the last election, which gave them control over the Senate, the House, and the White House. The voters did not vote for bipartisanship, which I think President Obama unwisely introduced into his operational agenda, after the public gave him an overwhelming mandate to lead. The public option and how it is finessed in the pulling and hauling that is the legislative process will be quite decisive in that regard.

If the Democrats give up on the public option, they must pass a piece of legislation that basically keeps its strategic focus in place. They may do so, for instance, by putting in the legislative language, all of the elements of the public option, may be, by shoring up the notion of an insurance exchange, or cooperative. In that respect, the insurance exchange (cooperative) should be set up after the fashion of community credit unions, which anybody could join, by agreeing to a set of bylaws. In order to make the cooperatives viable, they should be allowed to enroll nation-wide.

Furthermore, the Democrats must make sure that such aspects of the new health-insurance infrastructure, as putting an end to the practice of denying health insurance to people with pre-existing conditions, also survive any legislative and political bargains. This issue is going to be particularly important to the future of the Obama presidency, because unless he manages this political battle effectively, and gets the nation to a genuinely new day in health insurance and health-care, he will deserve a Democratic challenger from his Left, in four years.
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