EDITORIAL: Bennet takes lead on public option

Oct. 22--In today's hyper-partisan atmosphere in Congress, it is easy to forget that it was not Republicans who defeated a proposed public option as part of Obamacare eight years ago. It was Democrats.

In the modern definition of a self-fulfilling prophecy, former Sen. Max Baucus of Montana voted against two proposals for a public option -- one by Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, the other by Chuck Schumer of New York -- on the grounds that they could not attract the 60 votes necessary to overcome a Republican filibuster.

In fact, by the fall of 2009, thanks to Al Franken of Minnesota being seated after a contested election and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania switching parties, Democrats did have 60 votes for a time, including Independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Had they been united, they could have enacted a public option as an original part of the Affordable Care Act, providing a backstop in rural markets where private insurers have little incentive to participate.

But three Democrats -- Baucus, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, and Kent Conrad of North Dakota -- refused to support either proposal for a public option, joining united Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee to defeat them. So Obamacare went forward without one.

Fast-forward eight years and Colorado's senior senator believes it's time to try again. Last week, with Tim Kaine of Virginia, Michael Bennet introduced a bill to establish something called "Medicare X," not to be confused with the new iPhone.

The plan would make a version of Medicare available, starting in 2020, to under-65 residents of counties where either one or no private plans were available on the local Obamacare exchange. In 2023, the public option would become available nationwide. A year after that, it would become available to small businesses.

"I've always believed a public option should have been part of the Affordable Care Act," Bennet explained. "We tried to get it done then and we weren't able to do it. Tim and I both heard from our constituents, especially in rural Colorado and rural Virginia, that it's just unreasonable to force people to buy insurance when there is no competition. The price is high, the deductible is high, and the people want to have an option."

Of course, Democrats no longer have 60 votes in the Senate. They don't have even 50. But amid the chaos of the Trump administration, they have achieved a unity they lacked when they were in the majority. Sanders has introduced a bill that would establish a single-payer system, which is what opponents of a public option eight years ago feared it would lead to. Now Bennet's bill looks like a moderate alternative to Sanders' fully state-run model.

The struggles in small markets of a system based purely on the incentives of private insurers, combined with Republicans' failure to date to come up with any coherent alternative, have made a public option look increasingly attractive as an insurer of last resort for Americans with few other options.

While Republicans are in the majority, Bennet's bill has the proverbial snowball's chance of becoming law. But Democrats have high hopes that the Trump presidency might soon change the arithmetic in Congress, beginning with the mid-term election of 2018, although the 2018 Senate map puts Democrats at a severe structural disadvantage. Democrats have to defend 25 seats, including 10 in states Trump won in 2016, while Republicans are defending only eight.

"Whether it will pass is an interesting question because virtually nothing can pass these days in the Congress," Bennet said. "I think that, as part of an attempt to actually resolve the issues that people are having, not so much with Obamacare but with the American health-care system, this ought to be part of the solution to that. And I am optimistic we'll be able ultimately to get it passed."

The key word, of course, is "ultimately." How long it might take is anybody's guess, as is the amount of damage that might be done in the meantime as Trump sabotages Obamacare by threatening to withhold subsidies for those who could not otherwise afford coverage.

But the fact that a centrist such as Bennet is the main sponsor shows how much more mainstream a public option is today than eight years ago. Having watched Colorado's other senator, Cory Gardner, vote for every Republican attempt to gut Obamacare and take health insurance coverage from millions of Americans, we're proud a Coloradan is at the forefront of the movement to do belatedly what Democrats should have done eight years ago.

It is past time to provide a public safety net for a private health insurance market so twisted by perverse incentives that coverage remains a privilege attached to wealth or employment for those who don't qualify for traditional Medicare, Medicaid or veterans' health benefits. We don't know how many times Bennet will have to introduce some form of this bill before it gets a vote, but we urge him to keep at it.

--Dave Krieger, for the editorial board. Email: [email protected]. Twitter: @DaveKrieger

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