Senator Tom Coburn is a physician who until recently still went home to Oklahoma to deliver babies. He believes Congress should weigh the dangers of a nationalized health system much more seriously than it has. In the tradition of someone using a 2x4 to win the attention of a mule, yesterday he successfully pressed the Senate Health Committee to approve his idea of requiring Members of Congress themselves to enroll in whatever "public plan" is passed to compete with private insurance companies.
."Let's demonstrate leadership -- and confidence in the system -- by requiring that every member of Congress go into it," Mr. Coburn told his colleagues as they were marking up the health care proposal championed by Senator Ted Kennedy. His idea wasn't exactly greeted warmly by many public plan supporters. Senator Jeff Bingaman, a New Mexico Democrat, responded: "I don't know why we should require ourselves to participate in a plan that no one else needs to participate in. This bill goes to great lengths to show that the choice is there for everybody."
But Mr. Coburn disagreed, saying his reading of the 1,000-page health care bill convinced him that everyone would end up being forced into the public plan as private insurance carriers were squeezed out of the market by mandates and regulations. Therefore, if Congress decides a government-run health plan is good enough for the American people, it should be willing to put itself under its care umbrella.
By a 12 to 11 margin, the Senate Health Committee agreed. Senator Chris Dodd, the committee's acting chairman, and Senator Kennedy were absent from the committee but sent in proxy votes in favor. Maryland Senator Barbara Mikulski was the only other Democrat to back the measure. Every Republican save for New Hampshire's Judd Gregg voted in favor of the Coburn mandate.
Obviously, many members of Congress -- who are used to a generous and flexible set of health benefits -- have no intention of letting the Coburn mandate become law. They will undoubtedly try to strip it from the bill at some point, in a conference committee between the two houses if necessary. But for now it is embedded in the bill and any overt attempt to remove it would be met with howls of public outrage.
