Ugh.  I read the headline story in the Times-Argus today.  It’s behind a paywall, but if you have the ability to get there, the headline is “Reform Now, Pay Later” and it’s pretty much Shumlin saying “I don’t care about how we pay for it, we’ll look at that later, lets just pass a universal health care bill”.

To which I think you’d have to figure that either:

a) “passing single payer” is nothing more than a politically shrill move by Shumlin, who doesn’t really care about it or making it really work, but rather, just “getting a bill passed” in order to get it passed and hold the left in his  pocket for election season and support for whatever (decidedly un-left) things he wants to do

b) he’s got no political common sense whatsoever and is completely unaware of how the message of “we should pass a massive, currently illegal (by Federal law) social program the likes of which has never been done in the history of the country and we don’t even care how we’ll pay for it” plays to the tired Republican story of “tax and spend liberals” (by the way- isn’t that the definition of government? do Republicans not “tax” people and then “spend” the money they collected (and more)?).  One of the best arguments for single payer health care is the financial savings, why not talk about the funding?

c) whoever crafts his messaging is a complete idiot.  Biggest trouble with this possibility is that it still kinda requires option ‘b’ to be true; cause if a staff person told the guv “just get a Bill out their and tell em’ ‘lets not even look at the funding’ lets just pass the thing” Shumlin, if he had any political common sense whatsoever, should have said “are you nuts! we can’t promise all this without making clear how it would fund itself (or save the state money)!”

d) I’m totally missing something.  I mean, I’m up on the reports that were just issued, and understand the basics of the options, and frankly, the choices seem fairly straight forward; obviously there are important decisions to be made, but unless I was a coffee shy of coherency when I read this  morning’s paper, seems like there are real plans on the table and debating them and deciding on one is the next step- not just passing some kind of vague “lets do it and figure the money out later” Bill.  That Bill was already passed and it’s what funded the the study that brought the options.

e) OK, there’s also “e”- Shumlin is a political genius and the “add massive State program without thought about cost” message is going to somehow turn out to facilitate all sorts of great things.  

I think “a” or “d” seem the most likely….