A couple weeks ago I mentioned that I liked the opt-out idea so much that I wanted to make it applicable to Social Security and Medicare. And I wasn't exactly joking. Sure, I don't care for Americans losing out on health care because they live in a state with an inordinate number of backwoods charlatans who have an affinity for dueling banjos and propping up private health insurers. But I love the opt-out for the short-term and long-term political consequences. The proposal strips conservatives of their two most effective policy arguments: fiscal responsibility and federalism, which actually do exist once you get past the death panel tripe. But in addition to being a great solution to the current legislative rubix cube, an opt-out keeps the health care debate alive. Obama's assurance that he is determined to be the last president to tackle health care was hollow. Nothing better than to keep the onus on Republicans, as Andrew Sullivan notes:
It's a political nightmare for the right as it is currently constituted. In fact, I can see a public option becoming the equivalent of Medicare in the public psyche if it works as it should. Try running against Medicare.The collateral damage that an opt-out will inflict on the Republican Party -- if we can assume the public option is a success, as most honest brokers believe it will be -- is staggering. It's easy to envision state legislative races 10 years from now hinging on a candidate's willingness to vote for the opt-in. The optics of that in a place like Alabama would do more to help liberalism than Medicare ever did. Kevin Drum adds:
For the next four years Republican state legislators all over the country will be teaming up with the universally loathed insurance industry to try and deny their citizens access to a program that, for most of them, sounds like a pretty good deal. I don't know if Harry Reid was deviously thinking exactly that thought when he decided on this, but I'll bet someone was. It's hard to think of something that could force the GOP to make itself even more unpopular than it already is, but this might be it.
