From Steve Benen, responding to Steven Pearlstein’s column today about a possible compromise healthcare plan:
If there’s “a deal to be had here,” who is the deal with?
In theory, a deal should be fairly easy. Keep the insurance reform stuff and the increased subsidies, dump the public option, add in a few other goodies here and there for both sides, and voila. Dinner is served.
But who’s going to join us at the table? Are there any Republicans left who will vote for any healthcare plan at all, regardless of what is or isn’t in it? Who are they? As Michael Kinsley says morosely about a healthcare deal elsewhere in the paper: “I’d like to think that if it goes down this time — when even the insurance companies are on board, promising to eliminate their odious policies about preexisting conditions — Republicans will pay for having killed it, if indeed they do kill it. But they didn’t pay the last time.”
