The Washington Post delivered a hit piece today on Rep. Mike Ross and his Blue Dog Coalition, accusing the Blue Dogs of being in the pockets of health insurance and pharmaceutical companies.

The article covers newsworthy items, all of which are ”fair game.” It would be unfair, however, to suggest that the Blue Dogs are any more beholden to their respective special interests than are “progressive” Democrats to their special interests, or Republicans are to theirs, for that matter.  The truth is, the great majority of governing elites have been participating in different versions of the same racket – crony corporatism – and they have been rewarded by voters in doing so. Right now, the progressive Democrats and the Blue Dogs are battling to determine the degree to which their respective versions of corporate cronyism will dominate health insurance reform.

In a previous column, Johah Goldberg wrote:  

Everywhere we look we see the great and once-great beneficiaries of free markets running to the state for protection from the cruel bullying of competition. On health care, insurance companies and others repeat the mantra that they want to be “at the table rather than on the menu,” all the better to be positioned as a tax collector of the welfare state.

So which parties are going to be at the table and which ones are going to be served? Well, the progressives have been in the dining room all along; however, they might now be forced to choose between sitting at the kiddie table, or throwing a tantrum and ruining the feast, which would be self-destructive. To avoid that prospect, the progressives and their proxies have been prepared to snipe at the Blue Dogs for the next several weeks until Congress reconvenes – to see if they could generate enough negative publicitly to usher the Blue Dogs back into a  sideroom with the other nonentities where they belong.

But will that be necessary? Henry Waxman just announced that a deal has been struck between the progressives and the Blue Dogs.  

For now, at least, it seems like the big insurance and pharmaceutical companies will also keep their places at the head of the table. In a op-ed this morning, Charles Krauthammer argued that health insurance reform was likely to include new regulations that would be detrimential to the interests of insurance companies, but that they would be more than compensated for their troubles:           

To win back the vast constituency that has insurance, is happy with it, and is mightily resisting the fatal lures of Obamacare, the president will in the end simply impose heavy regulations on the insurance companies that will make what you already have secure, portable and imperishable: no policy cancellations, no preexisting condition requirements, perhaps even a cap on out-of-pocket expenses.

Nirvana. But wouldn’t this bankrupt the insurance companies? Of course it would. There will be only one way to make this work: Impose an individual mandate. Force the 18 million Americans between 18 and 34 who (often quite rationally) forgo health insurance to buy it. This will create a huge new pool of customers who rarely get sick but will be paying premiums every month. And those premiums will subsidize nirvana health insurance for older folks.

Net result? Another huge transfer of wealth from the young to the old, the now-routine specialty of the baby boomers; an end to the dream of imposing European-style health care on the United States; and a president who before Christmas will wave his pen, proclaim victory and watch as the newest conventional wisdom reaffirms his divinity.

Actually, I wonder if some of the big insurance companies might not mind the new regulations, either, since they would be better equipped to navigate the regulatory climate, whereas smaller and/or future competitors probably would not be so well positioned.  Anyway, it sounds like young single adults were not well represented at the table. Oh, wait, there they are: on the dinner plate!