"Democrats have been far too timid in taking on the right wing's arguments against government. They have been defensive when they should be going on offense by insisting that government can expand human freedom and give people options they would not otherwise have."

The Centrist Public Option

By E.J. Dionne Jr. Thursday, October 1, 2009

The strangest aspect of the debate over a public option for health coverage is that the centrists who oppose it should love it.

It doesn't involve a government takeover of the health-care system. The idea is that only consumers who want to enroll in a government-run health plan would do so. Anyone who preferred private insurance could get it.

The public option also uses government exactly as advocates of market economics say it should be deployed: not as a controlling entity but as a nudge toward greater competition. Fans of the market rightly oppose monopolies. But in many places, a small number of insurance companies -- sometimes only one -- dominates the market. The public option is a monopoly-buster.

Centrists tell us they want to hold down spending and fight deficits.

Strong versions of the public option, as the Congressional Budget Office showed in its scoring of Sen. Jay Rockefeller's proposal, cut the costs of insuring everyone.

Unfortunately, the debate over the public option has rarely concentrated on the substance of the idea. Instead, it has been almost entirely ideological.

Because opponents know from polling that the public wants the chance to choose a government plan, they move the discourse to abstract and often demagogic ground. The most revealing "argument" during the Senate Finance Committee's public-option debate on Tuesday came from Sen. Chuck Grassley.

"The government is not a fair competitor," Grassley said. "It's a predator."

Grassley was then forced to explain how he felt about Medicare. Is it predatory for government to pay health bills for the elderly? Is Social Security, which lives side by side with private pension and savings plans, predatory? Is it predatory for government to regulate, well, predatory lenders or stock swindlers or bank boodlers?

Democrats have been far too timid in taking on the right wing's arguments against government. They have been defensive when they should be going on offense by insisting that government can expand human freedom and give people options they would not otherwise have.

Continued at the Washington Post