He misrepresents the debate over reconciliation, acting like its current use for the patch bill validates those who wanted to use it for the whole hog.
That's not true. Reconciliation is only available for certain types of legislation, and some of the core parts of the bill (community rating, pre-existing condition regulations, lifetime caps on OOP costs) would have been excluded.
They're not passing "the healthcare bill" through reconciliation. They're passing a much smaller bill meant to substitute for the changes that would have been made in a conference committee if they hadn't lost the MA Senate seat.
Also, he completely glosses over the fact that adding a public option in the Senate would require bouncing the bill back to the House. Right now one of the biggest obstacles is convincing members of the House that the Senate won't screw around with their bill, hence the demand for some kind of promise beforehand on the part of Senate Democrats.
More generally, he's been slamming the current bill as "corporatism" because the government will subsidize people buying private insurance. At the same time, he opposes any cap on the tax exemption for health care benefits, which is essentially a subsidy for employers to buy private insurance. Besides, it's weird that AHIP hasn't caught on that it's a big giveaway to their members and is fighting against the bill.
For Greenwald and the FDLers, it's identity politics now, not public policy. They've repeated the DFH vs. VSP thing (which really did encapsulate the way DC newsmedia operates) until it's just cant, and nurtured their sense of grievance.
For them, the public option isn't about the impact it would have on actual people. It's a symbol of their struggle.
