Right For The Room

by dday

I would say that Howard Dean’s message today at this health care town hall in Pittsburgh at Netroots Nation, arguing strongly for a choice in health care other than a private insurance monopoly, and saying that the only element in the entire bill that can be credibly called health care reform is the public option, makes a lot more sense in this environment than Bill Clinton’s “accept half a loaf” speech last night (He had a generally good speech last night, but that was the ultimate message). Somebody has to make this argument, and if we don’t, absolutely nobody else will, and there will be no progressive counterweight to the manic-obsessive centrism that too many Democrats are kind of dying to perpetuate.

He’s also talking about the psychology of anger among the right wing in these town halls, and how it’s not about the bill, but a major generational change in America, and the sense among a certain element that things are slipping away. This of course doesn’t totally help us right now unless that new generation advocates for something worth doing.

…A very good point from Dean: nurse practitioners can perform about 60% of what he did as a primary care physician, and they should be able to work independently from primary care operations. We’re just going to need to do something like that, because adding 30-35 million people to the health insurance rolls and emphasizing prevention will require so many doctors, probably much more than we can muster. So empowering nurse practitioners would help this out pretty well.

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