Two Docs Sittin’ Around Talking

by digby

On her show this morning, Dr. Nancy Snyderman looked like she’d just been tasered when Howard Dean declared unequivocally that there would be a public plan in the final health care bill. She bet him a dinner that it wouldn’t happen.

Then she said this:

Snyderman: Everyone consistently says, “we’re going to give up on the public option. There may be triggers, there may be co-ops.” Why are you so sure that a public option will come to fruition?

Dean: Because it’s the only thing that works. I’m delighted that the trigger’s not in there because that was a total fraud. But nobody knows how co-ops will work. And they’re expensive. If controlling costs, which is part of the president’s agenda, is going to happen, you have to have a public option. If you want to get some people insured by 2010, which I think is essential for the future of the Democratic Party, you have to have a public option. It’s the only way to do it.

Snyderman: And the votes are there?

Dean: the votes are there. We count 51 votes in the Senate that will vote for a public option. Chris Dodd’s bill is a very good bill. The Waxman Miller Wrangel bill is a fine bill. I don’t agree with everything in them, but that’s real reform and this isn’t.

Snyderman: Well, listen if you really think that public option is going to happen, you’ve made me a happy person going into the week-end. I hope you’re right.

Dean’s argument is the right one: “there will be a public option because it’s the only thing that works.”

I seem to recall a certain youthful president who declared in an inaugural address delivered to delirious approbation just nine short months ago:

The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works, whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, health care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified.

He’s the one that put technical competence as the best measure of his success. And I have to say that the hope I’m clinging to at the moment is the hope that it’s one thing he truly believes in.

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