Back from dead: Return of the 'public option'

The public option is back. Its Lazarus act is hailed as a sign of how rosy the health- care debate looks for Democrats.

August is but a sepia-tinged memory. Passage of a sweeping bill is now considered a lock by the wisest Beltway pundits. And legislation may even include the most shining prize of all, the public option that liberals -- no matter what the talking points for public consumption -- consider a way station to the Valhalla of a government-controlled system.

The flush on ObamaCare's cheeks, though, is not necessarily a sign of health. The return of the public option speaks to a key -- perhaps decisive -- substantive weakness in the legislation. It's no accident that the public option came roaring back in the immediate aftermath of an insurance-industry-commissioned study arguing that ObamaCare would increase premiums.

The Devil will surely be in the details. Once the actual text of the bill is released, we will discover whatever mechanism, trip wire, or time bomb the Democrats have planted to effectively render the "opt-out" option moot. Anyone who has followed these Democrats for any length of time knows damned well how they operate: nothing is ever on the level.

One of their favored techniques is to publicly claim to be doing one thing while actually doing its polar opposite. Another is to embed a poison pill in a piece of popular legislation and then attack Republicans who refuse to swallow it whole.

It will be fascinating to see what sort of trickery they have employed in this event, especially since Obama has (foolishly) invested so much political capital in getting a health care bill passed this year.

As a follow up: in his column today, Bob Lonsberry made several excellent points:

In an opt-out state, you'll still have to pay taxes to support the Federal program. In so doing, not only will you be paying taxes for a program you don’t use, you’ll have to pay higher insurance premiums to bolster a company being gutted by the public option. Private insurance companies simply cannot compete with a government entity that can run a deficit at will.

And then... there's the Constitution, specifically the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection clause, which has been held in the past to guarantee equal access to government benefits.

Quoting Bob, now:

"Which means that the first day a state actually opts out, some liberal activist is going to file a lawsuit in federal court claiming that his/her/its rights are being denied. The argument will be that in some other state there is access to this federal benefit, but not in this state, and that is the unequal application of federal largesse. For good measure they will throw in the fact that their federal taxes -- as if liberal activists paid any taxes -- are paying for something they are not getting."

"I predict it would take an activist federal judge about a nanosecond to impose an injunction and the opt out would be opted out. It would be found to be an unfair and arguably unconstitutional denial of access to a federal program. And that’s all she wrote. At that point, the public option would be nationwide, not by congressional vote, but by judicial decree."

I believe he's correct.

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