Why I stopped reading about health care reform

I've done most of my health care reform posting at DetNews where the reader base needs to be convinced of the necessity of immediate action, but I've stopped posting about the proposed bills because all I've seen for months is speculation and "color commentary" like this about Reid's announcement yesterday:

Only Dana Milbank could write an entire column about the "proposal" Harry Reid laid out at yesterday's press conference without explaining what Reid actually proposed: That the health reform bill he is sending to the CBO will include a public option giving the states the choice to opt-out. Since that policy detail pretty much undermines his entire column, it's not surprising that he left it out. After all, Milbank's columns are about the story, not the facts.

To be fair, I believe pressure from liberal progressives did have a lot to do with keeping the public option alive, but I doubt that was the sole reason Reid surprised us yesterday. Thinking it's more likely those 300,000+ phone calls generated by Obama's tweetathon had a lot more to do with it. And of course, the plethora of polls that show a majority of Americans support a public option choice. But in any event, we're still pretty far from a final bill. I just can't bring myself to waste a lot of energy getting excited by media speculation. After all, these are the same people who pronounced the public option dead only a couple of months ago because some angry right wing shoutragers were bussed into town meetings.

Of course, if you enjoy reading this stuff, Memeorandum has it all.

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