As you’ve probably heard, a conservative judge in a federal district court struck down the individual mandate in the health care bill.  The basis for his decision is that, in his view, deciding not to purchase a product is not economic activity, and the federal government has no jurisdiction under the commerce clause.

A lot of the commentary I’ve seen has focused on the abstract argument of whether or not the federal government can “compel” you to buy a product.  This really isn’t an “economic freedom” thing as some people have tried to make it out to be; it’s more of a commerce clause vs police powers thing.  If you think about it, no one is filing suit to strike down auto insurance mandates in any state.  Massachusetts even has its own health care mandate, which has never been challenged successfully by anyone.  So all this faux-libertarian garbage about “freedom” can, and should, be dismissed out of hand.

What I’d really like to focus on is not so much the abstract debate about the scope of the commerce clause, but to take a step back and introduce a little perspective on what’s actually happening here.

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With a health care reform bill poised to pass, I thought I would mosy on over to DKos to see what the climate was like.  And that’s when I came across this:

People are so quick to rush to embrace a bill that’s not set in stone, which has been consistently eroded over the past year, at an exponentially accelerated pace, with each major concessions not just making the bill worse, but emboldening critics to make further demands. As crappy as the bill is now, it’s inevitably getting worse, and then, it’ll get even worse after that.And every time progressives shrug their shoulders and say, “all right, we’ll take whatever we can get”, you empower those critics. Rather than draw a line in the sand and bolster the efforts of true reformists, you are leaving them high and dry. And the weaker progressives get, the more Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman and Blanche Lincoln and the rest of that bunch can do to make this not just a bad bill politically, but a bad bill policy wise. [...]

We’re at the point, I think, where you strip this thing of anything remotely controversial and pass whatever is left — maybe tougher rules against rescissions, some regulatory reform, etc. But as far as substantive reform, we live in a legislative world were a majority can’t accomplish shit because idiotic rules prevent government from governing. And we can’t resort to reconciliation because we live in a world in which procedural tactics that were okay for Republicans, are somehow off limits for Democrats.

Nate Silver has a very well detailed take down of this kind of attitude, which I basically agree with unconditionally.

The bottom line is that the bill currently under consideration in the Senate (with the Executive Amendments and Nelson’s support) is still a good bill.  Is it a great bill?  No.  Is it my favorite bill?  No.  Would I like to see a robust public option?  Yes.  Am I pissed off that procedural rules give the keys to the palace over to the likes of Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson?  Absolutely.  But the take-away is that this bill is significantly better than the status quo.

To sit in your corner and stamp your feet because the bad men threw your bill in the dirt is beyond childish.  This bill will improve the lives of millions of Americans.  Ron Wyden’s bill will not.  The House bill will not.  Why?  Because they won’t pass the Senate.  Period.  Not even with reconciliation.

It’s time to grow up and pass a bill.

I got to do my first bit of puppeteering recently in this spot for MoveOn.org. It was a ton of fun for my brain, but a lot less fun for my shoulder and arm, which was stuck up in the air for extended periods into the wee hours that night. This spot was put together in 24 hours, from fabricating the puppets to creating a finished edit and graphics, which is a testament to the enormous talent of the fine artists at Charged. I did the P-Span graphics intro as well; not my worst for some 6:30 AM work!

My arm is inside the gray haired balding guy on the right:

Jon Stewart holds an excellent interview with former president of these United States of America, William Jefferson Clinton. The whole thing is great, but part 3 touches on health care and is really quite special. Other topics include the Clinton Global Initiative, Clinton’s recent lunch with President Obama, and how to rescue journalists from a hostile nation.

One of the points that I think doesn’t come up as frequently as it should in the Great American Health Care Debate is what happens to people in recessions.  Unfortunately, it takes a recession to really think about one.  Last month, one half million people lost their jobs, and arguably, most were lost at no real fault of the employee.  But it doesn’t end there for most folks.  Now, you’d think losing your job during a recession would be bad enough, but most people probably lost their health insurance too.

So let’s recap.  You lost your job, and you’ve also lost your health insurance.  So that means that you’ve lost your main income source and simultaneously added a potentially huge expense to your monthly budget.  Let’s hope you don’t get sick while you’re looking for a new job.  Or worse, let’s hope your kid doesn’t break his leg, or develop a learning disorder, or get strep throat.  Let’s also hope that you don’t lose your job while your wife’s pregnant, or this story might be about her:

Starla D. Darling, 27, was pregnant when she learned that her insurance coverage was about to end. She rushed to the hospital, took a medication to induce labor and then had an emergency Caesarean section, in the hope that her Blue Cross and Blue Shield plan would pay for the delivery.

This is a really ridiculous way to run a health care system.

Jackie came home with a similar type story.  Her lead stockroom employee used to be full-time, which qualifies him for free health care coverage at Coldwater Creek.  They, understandibly, cut him back to part-time, due to declining revenues.  Now he’s without health coverage — with AIDS.

The health of a nation’s people should not ebb and flow with the business cycle.  If anything should be recession-proof, it should be health care.  This system needs reform, and it needs it now.  And not just for this recession, but the next one, and the one after that.

Now, let’s get something done.

[h/t, Yglesias]

Update – Listening to Larry King in the background as a I write this, I heard Joel Osteen say that he believes “God has a plan,” in response to questions about the recession.  Thankfully, Barack Obama also has a plan, which matters a whole lot more.

Publius (with his newly acuired surname “starbursts“) gives a pretty good overview of the big ideas behind the two candidates health care policies.  He ends with a much broader note about conservatives’ and liberals’ respective approaches to the economy:

But it’s more than health care policy. The failure to give much weight to bargaining power disparities is at the heart of many a conservative/liberal economic disputes. Take unions for instance, or federal labor protections more generally. The standard conservative argument is that if employers act bad, employees can leave. Or, if they don’t pay enough, employees can just bargain. After all, everyone loves bargaining! (“Bargain” was a semi-erotic word for my old law and econ professors). These romantic visions, however, assume that individual employees have a lot more information, resources, and bargaining power than they actually have.

More broadly, the debate helps reaffirm the larger theme that government can be good. Indeed, government regulation is the end-all, be-all in correcting asymmetries in bargaining power and information. It’s like a giant union in that respect. Even the employer-based system — for all its flaws — at least tries to address these problems. A real national health care reform would go even further.

A Republican administration, however, isn’t going to address these types of problems. That’s because, in their world, markets don’t generally create these sorts of problems.

One last point — remember that the argument here isn’t so much about whether markets are good or not. There is no true “Left” in America — everyone believes in markets, including yours truly. The argument, then, is over what types of markets work best in what contexts. McCain thinks health care is a context where individual markets work best. Obama doesn’t. These differences are profound — on both a practical and theoretical level.

Mark my words, market absolutism will fall far from grace in the next decade, and conservatives will be forced to take a much more practical approach to economic subjects (at least regarding regulation and market disparities).  Without the specter of communism, it becomes difficult to achieve a mandate from voters for such an extreme economic policy position.