The New York Times reports “Schumer offers middle ground on health care.”
How could this be?
The article describes Schumer offering a limit to the proposed public national health insurance plan so that it can’t compete with private health insurance companies to the best of its ability. The effort for national health insurance is ostensibly beneficial because it could compete with private insurance plans, but would still be an insurance effort that wouldn’t promise complete coverage. Senator Schumer’s idea is not a “middle ground,” it is a move to defend an industry most are discontent with. It is a further push right of an already compromised position from the point of view of public interest.
Today doctors with PNHP and other activists were arrested in a coordinated protest that disrupted the start of a Senate Finance Committee hearing that further demonstrated the degree to which serious consideration of single-payer health care has been and is being avoided by politicians. Democratic Senator and Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus both declared “we need more police” and that he respected the views of all Americans — but apparently not enough to include the options quite possibly preferred by a majority of them in his committee hearing. Senator Schumer also sits on this committee.