Senate dumps public option: Wins for Michael Bennet, Joe Lieberman?

Are Colorado’s Sen. Michael Bennet and Conneticut’s Joe Lieberman both winners as a result of the reported decision by Senate Democrat leaders to dump the government-run public option health plan from the health spend and tax bill (HR 3950)?

Bennet has strongly backed the public option that won’t happen. He has endeared himself to 

his base but won’t have to sacrifice his seat by voting for the public option, because there won’t be a final vote on it. However, he’ll still be vulnerable because he’s a proven hard left Democrat. Voters are not impressed by the hard left.

Lieberman vowed to vote against the public option even if it might cost him a power Senate committee chairmanship. He won’t have to vote against the public option, because he and other Democrats convinced his leadership that it doesn’t have a chance of passing. That’s why they’re dropping it. He probably strengthened his standing because his state is the home to Aetna and other insurers that would have been killed by the creation of a public option health plan.

The end of the public option still leaves the Senate with a terrible bill that would be a disaster for employers large and small. It would force tax increases and new regulatory measures that would keep the U.S. economy in the tank for years.

Since Bennet will vote for whatever his leaders tell him to support, he’ll have to answer to GOP charges that he helped all but nationalize health care, cut Medicare budgets and cut the Medicare budget for home health care. He’ll vote for the huge tax increases in the bill, and he’ll vote to damage the Colorado and U.S. economies.

Because of the Medicare cuts, seniors will hate ObamaCare and the Democrats who support it.

But if Medicare and Medicaid are expanded to cover unemployed 55- to 65-year-olds as may be proposed, they may offset the votes that they lose by cutting Medicare budgets for seniors by expanding Medicare for Baby Boomers. Seniors normally vote their pocketbooks. Baby Boomers always have.

Even though ObamaCare is a terrible bill, I wonder whether the Republicans who’ve been running against the public option will figure out how to run against the final bill. You really have to understand business, economics, health care, health insurance and consumers to see how bad the bill is. 

I guess the new 26-word sound bite will be, “ObamaCare kills jobs, raises taxes and restricts access to medical technology in ways that will make it more costly and painful to live out your retirement.” And that’s what ObamaCare will do: It will make dying more painful.

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