Why the Public Option S**t Storm is Great News - The Treatment

Image by MatthewBradley via Flickr

By Noam Scheiber - I'm almost certainly going to get in trouble for blogging on vacation, but I thought this point needed to be made and didn't see anyone making it: I have no idea whether the administration intended to shift its position on the public option over the weekend (you can make a plausible case that it didn't), and, if so, what it hoped to accomplish. But what it has accomplished seems really important and helpful. Prior to all the apoplexy on the left, the two poles of the debate were the president, who wanted a reasonable, fairly moderate set of health insurance reforms, but was nonetheless being branded a socialist or whatever, and a lot of lunatics on the right screaming about death panels and enemies lists and home invasions. Read More