(With such a heated discussion happening about whether to demand more in the health care bill, I wanted to re-promote this diary that makes the simple point: Whether you think the Senate bill should have been passed or not, there is a strategic value in having some voices pushing for more. - D - promoted by David Sirota)
In my piece yesterday about the rigged assumptions confining our health care debate, I might have added one more assumption that seems to be at work here: The assumption that "after this bill is passed, we will later come back and fix the things in the bill that are not good."
This assumption, of course, includes a bit of a contradiction with the first assumption from my piece yesterday - the assumption that this is our "last chance" to enact health care reform. It's not entirely logical to argue that we have one chance to enact health care reform because Congress will supposedly never revisit the issue in the future, and then simultaneously argue that Congress will be happy to revisit health care repeatedly to fix the stuff in this bill that's broken. It's either one or the other - it can't really be both. And here's the thing: If it's the former, if this is our "last" or "only" chance because Congress won't come back to health care for a generation, then it means the failings of this bill will be cemented in stone; If it's the latter, it means Congress can, in fact, go back to the drawing board right now because it will be happy to revisit health care.
Of course, you could argue that if the current bill passes, Congress will be more likely to go back to health care in the future specifically because this bill will create all sorts of new things that Congress will need to/want to address. But if you are making that argument, then there is an X factor we must all remember as we continue to have this very heated "pass it/don't pass it" argument.
This week, the White House attacked Howard Dean and progressives for highlighting the very serious policy flaws in this bill - the administration attacked us for threatening the future of health care reform. But what Dean and progressives are doing is actually increasing the chances that the final outcome will be better - both in the short term and the long term.
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