Legal Commentary

The Argument For Reconciliation: Saving Lives

By Big Tent Democrat

Ezra Klein unwittingly provides the argument for reconciliation on a health insurance premium assistance bill (predictably, Steve Benen jumps aboard the anti-reconciliation train):

I could imagine a cost-benefit analysis that judges the whole bill worth it, or the whole bill not worth it. But it is very, very hard to imagine a cost-benefit analysis in which small policies operating on the margins and promising to save small-but-measurable amounts of money are worth more, in either direction, than the hundreds of thousands of people who will be saved -- not to mention spared bankruptcy, and lifted from chronic pain or impairment -- by the rest of the bill. The areas of controversy have become very slight given the magnitude of the underlying bill.

(Emphasis supplied.) Ezra believes he is making an argument for capitulation to the Gang of "whatever the number is today." In fact, that Gang will never agree to a health bill. Ezra is right - no Exchange, no "regulation," no excise tax, no "small-but-measurable" saving is worth blocking the parts of the bill that will provide less well off people with health insurance paid for by wealthy people. That's why reconciliation must be employed. To save lives. It's the only way.

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on December 14, 2009 (boomark / email).