Jonathan Chait explains how health insurance reform just became one.

Eli Sanders was The Stranger's associate editor. His book, "While the City Slept," was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. He once did this and once won...

5 replies on “A Fait Accompli”

  1. Despite big mouth right wingers who do the bidding of crooked insurance companies, Dems know if they report back to the states with nothing to show for this, they’ll pay in the next election.

  2. That’s cause we’re not in a mood to tolerate failure, Vince.

    There will be consequences, and lobbyists don’t vote in primaries.

    Single payer national health care as a strong public option – or your resignation – those are the choices.

  3. And just what is that fait accompli? (1) No public option (maybe an ouside chance of a severly castrated one). (2) No change to the employer insurance market (which covers 75% of voters). (3) Some good, radical reforms in the individual insurance market (which covers a tiny slice of voters). (4) A massively expensive new entitlement in the form of subsidies for good insurance far above the poverty line. (5) No cost control whatsoever.

  4. The employer-based system is doomed, but things will have to get a lot worse for a lot more people before the masses are shocked out of their idiotic stupor and are ready to accept a workable solution. Most people still don’t personally know someone who’s been abandoned to die by their so-called insurer, and they simply aren’t able to make the mental link between abstract statistics and the possibility that they themselves could be the next victim of rescission or fraudulent denial. Hell, most people act as if they’re going to live forever and never get sick.

    For now, all we can do is try to patch over the holes. Yes, it will cost more than actually implementing a sane system like they have in all other civilized nations, but when our collective stupidity is on the line, Americans have proven time and again that no price is too dear.

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