Howard Dean: ‘Kill the Senate Healthcare Bill’

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Well as I’ve said before, it’s much easier to say these sorts of things when you’re not actually an elected official anymore, but one-time presidential candidate Howard Dean is apparently telling liberals they should kill healthcare reform.  Or, as Ezra Klein might put it, we should kill hundreds of thousands of people.  (That was snark by the way…)

According to Greg Sargent, Dean will say in a pre-recorded statement, among other things:

This is essentially the collapse of health care reform in the United States Senate. Honestly the best thing to do right now is kill the Senate bill, go back to the House, start the reconciliation process, where you only need 51 votes and it would be a much simpler bill.

This assumes a great deal of course, including that the reconciliation process would actually create a simpler or better bill.  If it did then Dean may be on to something, but I think he’s being a bit naive.

Matt Continetti reminds us of one more wild card at play here:

Of course, there’s always Roland Burris. The unelected, unaccountable liberal senator from Illinois could go rogue and scuttle the bill. And he holds Barack Obama’s old Senate seat. Wouldn’t that be ironic.

Indeed.  The idea that progressives in Congress could be responsible for healthcare reform’s defeat is quite the irony.  I think it makes very little sense, though I am aware that even supposedly good reforms can have unintended consequences.