The Poker Player

We're at an intriguing point in the national debate over health care reform. Unless you are a very serious policy wonk, you probably have been having a bit of trouble sorting out all of the charges and counter-charges swirling around the Obama Administration's effort to implement the first comprehensive reform of how Americans are insured against health risks in decades.

Many ships have crashed on these shores, most memorably, the first Clinton Administration, where President Clinton sent his wife into an early political battle. She failed, and his years in the White House never again provided any political opening to revisit this issue.

Let us be clear why serious health-care reform is so difficult: Money.

In case you thought that by living in the richest country in the world, and a purported democracy at that, entitled you to a reasonable opportunity to insure yourself and your family against the awful but substantial risks that somewhere along the way, you or one of those you care about most will develop an expensive health "condition," you were dead wrong.

You see, in America, big insurance companies make billions of dollars making sure that when we most need insurance, we will not be allowed to have it. That is the bottom line, and that is what Obama is trying to fix.

My analysis of his strategy is that he has been holding the so-called "public option" over the heads of the industry to scare them into becoming responsive to needed changes. They have had a good run, but their days of massive profits at the expense of the rest of us are done, and they indeed are truly scared shitless by the specter of Big Government cracking down on them.

It's a classic Bait and Switch. Obama knows these wimps are so soft and fat in their profitable enclaves that they will breathe a massive, fatuous sigh of relief once their profits are only cut in half.

Meanwhile, you and I, fellow citizens, will finally get the relief we deserve.

I predict Obama will abandon this bluff, the public option, once the features of the main health care reform bill attract enough bipartisan support to not only pass Congress but convince independents and responsible conservatives that this is change they can live with.

He is a master politician, after all.

I doubt he ever was married to the public option, any way. After all, he is not a leftist, he is a centrist, and most of all a pragmatist. He has manipulated the freaked-out right-wing fringe into a corner from which they cannot escape.

As a long-time political analyst, I appreciate the moves of a master politician at work here. It amuses me to listen to the chattering classes on TV. They are only now beginning to catch up to Obama's moves, and they remain a lap or two behind, especially at CNN, Fox and MSNBC.

Reform is imminent, and even his opponent in the last election, John McCain, senses that now. This is a man who knows how the game is played.

We'll have an acceptable reform in place by the end of this year, and that is a blessing, especially for the sick, the elderly, the poor and the uninsured.

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