Is the Public Option a Distraction?

Ezra analyzes the politics of the public option debate.

Most health-care wonks agree that the immense controversy generated by the public option has deflected attention from other important elements of the bill. You can draw only so many lines in the sand before a couple begin getting washed away. But there's a split on whether that distraction has been a good or bad thing.
 
The case against goes something like this: The success of the plan is going to depend much more on adequate subsidies than any of the public option compromises on the table, and letting all the energy go into the public option has left fairly little organizing capacity for things like tax credits for people making between 300 and 400 percent of poverty. The liberal obsession with the public option -- and not even a very strong public option! -- has distracted them from these more important policies, making it more likely that they'll fall a bit short of where they otherwise could be.

The case for goes something like this: The success of the plan is going to depend much more on adequate subsidies and the individual mandate than on any of the public option compromises on the table, and diverting all of the conservative base's energy into fighting around the margins of the public option has left them with fairly little organizing capacity to go after the revenues or the mandate or the total cost of the bill. The conservative obsession with the public option -- and not even a very strong public option! -- has distracted them from these more important issues, making it more likely that health-care reform survives with its basic structure intact.
 
I'm in the second camp. That's not to say this was the plan, or that the public option isn't worth achieving in its own right. But insofar as it's drawn fire away from the potentially unpopular elements that can't be sacrificed -- elements like the revenues and the mandate -- and toward a popular element that can be compromised, it's been a boon for the bill.