There are two very visible sides to this debate over whether and how the U.S. health care system should be improved. On the left end are those who argue that a public option (or government-run insurance plan) must be part of any final legislation, and on the right end are those who oppose any form of socialized medicine.
Then there is the middle: Montana Sen. Max Baucus and five so-called moderates on the Senate Finance Committee, and the majority of Americans who, blinded by the bickering, don’t really know what to think.
Competing interest groups release competing polls each week with competing conclusions. Recently, when President Obama’s Organizing for America announced that it had garnered 1 million signatories on his petition for health care reform, soon thereafter Free Our Healthcare Now, which opposes nationalizing health care, said it had received 1 million signatures of its own. Liberals who support a single-payer system have voiced their opinions by interrupting health care hearings on Capitol Hill; conservatives have taken to disrupting politicians’ town hall meetings.
Baucus, meanwhile, is taking a beating for trying to appease as many sides as possible. He has tried desperately to win over any Republican support for health care legislation and has thus alienated many of his Democratic constituents. Yet if the senator softens his stance and advocates a public option, which he could still do, he would then risk becoming the prime target for those still wary of a government-run insurance option.
This may not matter in other states, but it does in Montana, where a Democrat has to at least be perceived as a moderate on certain issues, and often relies on Republican votes to be elected. And, while Baucus wields exceptional power in the Senate, so too did former GOP Sen. Conrad Burns. But once Burns was painted as an out-of-touch extremist, he was narrowly beat by a relatively unknown state senator from Big Sandy.
This isn’t a defense of Baucus, just of his position as a point man in the health care debate. He is one of the key architects of what, if passed, would be the biggest change in American policy in a generation – government-funded, and possibly mandated, health care. Which is why the argument that Baucus has too much power in the Senate for representing so few people (just 0.3 percent of the nation’s population) is growing louder.
It’s true, a Democratic senator from a more liberal state – such as California or New York – may have fewer reasons to hammer out a bipartisan health care deal. Democrats have a super majority, and if they keep their colleagues in line they shouldn’t have to consult with the opposition. Yet there would be no less opposition if California’s Dianne Feinstein were spearheading health care reform legislation.
The real problem with health care reform is the vast majority of Montanans, and Americans for that matter, don’t know what side to take – yet. And, yes, the vast majority of us are quiet moderates.
What’s been lost in the debate that involves weekly bashing of our senior senator, is a clear explanation of what, exactly, is the goal of reform and what it will mean to both those who need health insurance and those of us who already have it. That’s because the existing various bills in Congress have yet to be reconciled into one piece of legislation in conference committees. In the meantime, the president’s stumping for health care reform in recent press conferences has been glaringly lacking in specifics.
The message, instead, has been dumbed down into a battle between socialized vs. free-market health insurance, when something in between is what will likely emerge as a new law aimed at expanding coverage and lessening costs. Baucus, at the center of the debate, has remained poised in the face of those who say he is the wrong man for the job and critics who point out that he has taken considerable contributions from the medical industry.
And he has. Yet those same critics have done little to convince anyone that someone else, who with any time in Washington is also beholden to special interest groups, would do any better in furthering legislation the middle can understand and embrace.