Krug

In his latest column, Health Care Showdown, Krugman takes on the Democrats who can't wean themselves from the corporate teat:

The Republicans, with a few possible exceptions, have decided to do all they can to make the Obama administration a failure. Their role in the health care debate is purely that of spoilers who keep shouting the old slogans — Government-run health care! Socialism! Europe! — hoping that someone still cares.

...Yet it remains all too possible that health care reform will fail, as it has so many times before. ...The real risk is that health care reform will be undermined by "centrist" Democratic senators who either prevent the passage of a bill or insist on watering down key elements of reform.

...What the balking Democrats seem most determined to do is to kill the public option, either by eliminating it or by carrying out a bait-and-switch, replacing a true public option with something meaningless. For the record, neither regional health cooperatives nor state-level public plans, both of which have been proposed as alternatives, would have the financial stability and bargaining power needed to bring down health care costs.

Whatever may be motivating these Democrats, they don’t seem able to explain their reasons in public.

Thus Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska initially declared that the public option — which, remember, has overwhelming popular support — was a "deal-breaker." Why? Because he didn't think private insurers could compete: "At the end of the day, the public plan wins the day." Um, isn't the purpose of health care reform to protect American citizens, not insurance companies?

Go read the whole thing. As usual, he's spot-on.