Sent This Letter Today

For publication by my former employer:

Stealth Move Political Genius?

Today, Majority Leader Harry Reid announced a game-changing plan for the Senate to consider a health care reform bill that would allow individual states to decline to participate in the so-called public option, the dreaded "government-run health care" insurance that has been such an easy and distracting target for those opposed to change.
The state opt-out wasn't Reid's idea and he came to it slowly. There is some speculation that the Obama administration may be tepid about it as well, although the White House denies it.
It looks like a stealth move and political genius to me.
 Polls show the majority of people in a majority of states favor a public option — soon to be renamed the consumer option or the competitive option or something less misleading.
It would offer those without affordable health insurance —  like that laid off 39-year-old father of two in Wisconsin who just joined the Army so his wife could continue treatment for her ovarian cancer — to choose from not only several private plans but also one government, Medicare-like plan.
 Insurance companies hate this idea. They will be forced to compete with the government, and may have to rethink the way they do business.
No state will be forced to offer the public option to its citizens, but it's hard to imagine residents of, for example, Washington, understanding when their state refuses to offer them the same choice that Oregonians are getting.
The legislation still has to surmount a cloture vote to defeat a Republican filibuster in the Senate and it needs all 60 Democratic senators to do so. It must be reconciled with whatever the House puts forth, which will definitely include a public option.
But I believe we're finally on our way to meaningful health care reform. I believe the log jam is breaking up.
So, probably, do opponents. Get ready to hear a lot more crazy.