Why argue for excluding a public option, but not an individual mandate, both will be attacked by GOP

[ProSense]

Bill Scher

Is It Better For The Public Option For Reid To Leave It Out?

Over at The Wonk Room, Igor Volsky, after recalling how conservatives successfully killed health care reform on the Senate floor in 1994, makes the counter-intuitive argument that the public option stands of better chance of passing if Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid leaves it out of the bill he brings to the Senate floor,

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A legit argument, though one with which I happen to disagree.

Preventing right-wing opposition from suffocating health care legislation of the Senate floor would not necessarily become easier without the public option as a target. There are plenty of hysterical attacks to be made against the individual mandate, that can be just as effective as those against the public option when not countered properly.

Furthermore, conservatives are experts at taking peripheral, obscure components of legislation and blowing them up into evidence of a government plot to kill your newborns and serve them as pork burritos to illegal immigrants when the new death panels break for lunch.

Those risks persist no matter what is in the bill. Once a high-profile bill comes to the floor, those risks can only be dealt with head-on.

It's also no certainty that the House can prevail upon the Senate to add a public option in House-Senate conference. That will only happen if there if Senate moderates can be convinced that there is no reason to be skittish. And that can only happen if the public option is fully engaged and voters in those key states respond to our arguments and out-shout the right-wing noise machine.

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[Kurt_and_Hunter]

1. If we have 60 votes for the Finance bill the pugs wouldn't be able to make trouble

The argument presumes achieving cloture for Finance but not for HELP.

If we have cloture for both, no problem.

If we lack cloture for both, we have problems either way.

[BOSSHOG]

2. If Nancy Pelosi proposed doing away with the government

and turning all operations over to corporations, the gop would foam at the mouth and OPPOSE her proposal before they figured out what she was proposing. Republicans and their supporters are nothing more then naysayers because they hate Obama and in my humble sissy assed liberal veteran self think they hate America.

[alc]

3. mandate is required for other reforms

For example pre-existing conditions. Without a mandate you can't require coverage for pre-existing conditions or many people won't get insurance until they have a condition.

Mandating that young/healthy people get coverage decreases the cost for everyone else and makes it feasible to provide subsidies for low income people. Otherwise we go above the trillion dollar mark that won't pass (or 800 billion or whatever it is now). Since they won't talk about health care reform that will reduce medical costs per person they need insurance reform to focus on getting more people paying into the system so the insurance cost per person is lower.

Both of these happen with or without the public option but can't be done without the mandate.

[ProSense]

4. "Without a mandate you can't require coverage for pre-existing conditions" and

without a public option you can't bring down cost and effectively cover more people. That is why the CBO indicated that Baucus' original bill would cover 94% of Americans versus 97% for the HELP bill.

[TheKentuckian]

5. The GOP will attack Jesus to score points(nt)