The senators who have been seeking a bipartisan solution haven’t succeeded and the Republicans have made it clear they are against the public option. Therefore, there is no reason to continue that approach.

Democrats need to simply end gov’t assistance to private insurers, and perhaps health care providers, while creating the public option.

I wonder if the gov’t gives out enough subsidies to various industries that it could (at least begin to) end those to pay for subsidies to millions of Americans who are at present uninsured.

Public option!

It’s too bad that plenty of Democrats have dismissed Krugman’s take on the fight over health reform.

and stiglitz’s (my bold.):

AMY GOODMAN: And healthcare? He’s called for universal healthcare, but he does not call for single-payer healthcare.

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: I think that there are some fundamental problems in the efficiency of our healthcare system. And what we’ve seen is that the private healthcare insurers do not know how to deliver an efficient way.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you support single-payer healthcare?

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: I think I’ve reluctantly come to the view that it’s the only alternative. You know, we’ve tried a lot of other things. And we’ve been—you know, I was in the Clinton administration, and we debated a lot of alternatives, and I’ve watched things as they’ve emerged and, you know, evolved over the last twelve, sixteen years, and I think there’s a growing consensus that the private market exclusion is not going to work.

AMY GOODMAN: Joe Stiglitz, I want to thank you for being with us, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, professor at Columbia University, co-author of The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict.

but then i think we need a carbon tax to save the planet.

...the final form of the policy has to be good enough to do the job. You might think that half a loaf is always better than none — but it isn’t if the failure of half-measures ends up discrediting your whole policy approach.

Which brings us back to health care. It would be a crushing blow to progressive hopes if Mr. Obama doesn’t succeed in getting some form of universal care through Congress. But even so, reform isn’t worth having if you can only get it on terms so compromised that it’s doomed to fail.

When the corporations have sufficiently identified themselves with the “New Democrats” and the “Blue Dogs” the cry will switch from “Bipartisanship” to some other kumbayish euphemism.