As the Obama administration merrily dispatches with that part of healthcare that the public broadly (and, the WH would add: inexplicably) favors, the Public Option, they still stand pat on the part that will really get the folks screaming: the individual mandate. Marc Ambinder chanels the latest (and inevetiably a self-loathing Clinton administration alum) “anonymous source” from inside the Obama administration who chooses to leak this sort of self-damning pablum:

The president continues to operate under the belief that liberals will warm to the bill when presented with a goodybag that includes includes an individual mandate, community rating, guaranteed issue, and a minimum required package. There’s no chance, really, that a bill WON’T feature these reforms. Quietly, to secure and keep Democrats on board, the White House is going to bargain, providing inducements, like more money for favored projects, etc., in order to secure individual votes.

Let’s get Rahm in order on something right now: Without a robust public option there can be no individual mandate. Without strict cost controls and the much-longed-after downward bend to the cost curve, all you’re left with is today’s overpriced, low-choice coverage which, under new laws anybody can get…and they’d have to. That’s sort of why the insurance lobbies favor a plan with no public option and/but an individual mandate; especially if their buddy Max Baucus manages to use the legislation to increase their profit margins to 35%. Oh, and we’d be ditching the employer mandate as well. So there’d be impetus for employers to ditch the matching coverage schemes of today to cut their costs in favor of kicking you out on your own…where you’d be required by law to pay ever more since you’d have no access to the sort of pooled coverage groups and bargaining power that might actually, you know, contain costs. This is really sounding like a wonderful plan they’ve got going.

You can ditch the public option, but with it has, HAS to go: the individual mandate. You then rely on slow growth of acceptance (the campaigning Obama said as much: people will buy healthcare if they can afford it. They want to buy in, but often can’t in the current setup that’s too heavily weighted towards certain “good” jobs with plans attached or the occasional large coverage pools.) It would be a bad outcome, and would extend the period of suffering for all of us; but it’s not nearly as bad as losing the public option and the employer mandate and yet inexplicably keeping the individual mandate along with none of the potential consumer choice and provider competition-oriented benefits. Now you’re forced to buy insurance that too few folks can afford anyway.

Instead, we’re being told to quit being smelly hippies and get on board with the wonderful program of force-fed shit sandwiches, and could we please all agree it’s the best of all possible worlds? Uh, no. We can’t. Lead, follow, or get the fuck out of the way.