This afternoon, Joe Lieberman announced that he intends to filibuster any amendment that would include the slightest hint of a public option. This puts him to the right of Republican Olympia Snowe as well as prominent ex-Republicans like Bill Frist and Bob Dole. Certainly, this will earn him accolades from the DC media and the various Broderites who try to disguise their ignorance of basic policy with their mindless reverence for "bipartisanship." They will no doubt pull out the tired "last honest man" editorials to lionize Lieberman as a courageous, elder statesman of a bygone age who has decided to stand up to the excesses of his problem.
Of course, the reality is that Joe Lieberman is simply a bitter liar and nothing underlines that more than his ridiculous and blatantly false argument against the public option.
According to Reuters, Lieberman characterizes the public option as a "new entitlement" that will be paid for by tax payers and "the premium payers." In other words, Lieberman is characterizing the public option as "free health care" that will simply be dished out from the federal budget without any contribution from those participating in it (hence, his implication that "premium payers" are a separate group). This, of course, is a blatant lie, and though Lieberman can surely rest easy that no one in the DC media would dare question the honesty of their "last honest man," it's important to make sure that everyone in the progressive community is 100% clear on the simple fact that Joe Lieberman is a willful, shameless liar.
As everyone with even the slightest knowledge of the proposed health care reform package knows, the public option is not a national insurance program financed out of the federal budget. It is not free health care. It is, simply, a not-for-profit insurance program administered by the federal government. The people who participate in the public option will have to pay premiums and deductibles just as if they had bought a policy from a private insurer.
Moreover, the public option will have to rely on these premiums to finance itself. It would not be financed out of the federal budget. Like an insurance company, the public option would have to adjust premiums to keep itself afloat. It will not rely on nonparticipating taxpayers to keep itself viable any more than any other insurance company.
While it's true that some people will pay for their public option policy with subsidies, these subsidies will be available to them whether or not there is a public option. In fact, as the CBO has pointed out time and time again, the public option helps cut the federal deficit since it would prevent federal money from being used to pad the insurance companies' profit margin. It is, quite simply, a way for us to ensure that the money we do spend on covering the uninsured goes towards providing coverage and not towards providing executive bonuses.
Lieberman also says that, like Medicaid and Medicare, the public option would increase premiums for private insurance policy holders through a phenomenon called "cost-shifting." This theory basically states that the low rates paid out by Medicare are partially paid for by higher rates paid by private insurers. While the argument is already dubious in the case of Medicare, it is entirely moot in terms of the public option being proposed in the Senate. Chuck Schumer's "level playing field" clause requires the public program to independently negotiate for prices on its own. It would not be tied to Medicare rates nor would it receive any kind of assistance from Congress in "artificially" enforcing costs.
So basically, both of Lieberman's arguments against the public option simply do not apply to the public option that has been proposed by Harry Reid. Of course, it is hard to believe that someone who has worked closely on health care reform in the past does not know this, so it's safe to conclude that Lieberman is just lying to justify his petty gamesmanship to an uninformed and apathetic media. With that said, even if the DC media refuses to call him on it, progressives need to take every opportunity to make it clear to anyone who will listen that Lieberman's threats are not based in either principle or substantive policy considerations. They are based in lies, and as such, there is nothing remotely hyperbolic about continuously repeating this simple phrase:
Joe Lieberman is a shameless liar.