Lieberman should get credit for role passing health bill

Instead of vilifying Sen. Joe Lieberman, Democrats should be praising him for saving health care legislation from defeat.

And liberal criticism of the Senate's health bill as some sort of gift to the health-insurance industry, unworthy of passage, is just laughable.

Whether health care reform proves to be a political boon or blight for Democrats in 2010 is open to question, but the fact is that they are nearing a historic accomplishment - insurance coverage for almost 30 million Americans and a ban on denial of coverage because someone is sick.

Democrats could have written far, far better bills than either the House or Senate versions, but the Senate version required herculean efforts on the part of two of the least-loved members of the Senate - Majority Leader Harry Reid and Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus and the late intervention of a third, Lieberman.

The venom heaped on Lieberman for pulling the government-run "public option" insurance plan and Medicare for people 55 to 64 years old out of the Senate health-reform bill has been withering. His colleague, Rep. Rosa DeLauro suggested voters recall him. MoveOn.org posted a video making him out to be a sock puppet of the insurance industry.

The fact is, Lieberman's success in inducing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to drop the public option and Medicare buy-in was a gift to Democrats.

Lieberman provided cover for four or five other moderate Democrats who might well have been "No" votes and sent the Senate bill down to defeat.

In fact, 10 senators wrote a letter to Reid opposing the Medicare buy-in.

Both the public option and the Medicare buy-in were devices invented by liberals to kill off the private health insurance industry in America and create a Canadian-style single-payer health care system.

It's sometimes called "Medicare for all," and liberals defend it despite the fact that the Medicare system is going broke and, if all hospitals and doctors were paid Medicare reimbursement rates, many hospitals would go broke and many doctors would quit.

Recently, former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean declared that if he were a senator, he'd vote against the Reid bill because it "expands private insurers' monopoly over health care" and therefore "is not real health reform." The bill, without a public option, also has been branded "a wet sloppy kiss to the insurance industry."

Tell that to the insurance lobby, America's Health Insurance Plans, which has been objecting vociferously that the Senate bill - and the House version, more so - will result in higher premiums for everyone who buys insurance.

Americans would be far better off if the Senate had adopted legislation proposed by Sens. Wyden and Bob Bennett requiring all Americans to have insurance and giving them a tax credit to buy it in the private market.

Regulated private competition would lower costs, as has been proved by the Medicare Part D prescription drug program. Theoretically, a House-Senate conference committee could produce a final bill that's better than either chamber has passed. But that's highly unlikely.

Liberals dominate in the House, and if they had their way, the bill would head America toward Canada.

So, the final bill has to be modeled on the Senate bill because, if it's not, Lieberman will stand against it. He's doing his old party a big favor.

• Morton Kondracke is executive editor of Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol Hill.

© 2009, Roll Call Newspaper. Distributed by United Features Syndicate