Here's some interesting commentary on the subject of fiscal conservatism and health care reform...

http://trueslant.com/zaidjilani/2009/10/24/the-public-option-saves-money-2/

Here's a bit of cognitive dissonance that's been bothering me during the entirety of the health care debate. The most ardent opponents of the public option - a new public insurance plan that would be offered to those who cannot get insurance through the private market (although unfortunately it is not open to everyone) - have been politicians and pundits who proudly refer to themselves as fiscal conservatives.

You know these folks - the Mary Landrieus and Evan Bayhs of the world. They play their violins on behalf of our (admittedly sizable) national debt, and decry the inclusion of the public option in health care legislation by saying it will cost too much. And yet what we've seen from all the different studies on the subject - whether from outside groups or the widely-respected nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office - is that the only way to save real money is by including the public option in health care legislation. And what's more, the better the option - meaning, the more it's able to compete effectively with private insurance to be able to offer the same level of care for less - the more money we save.

Thus, if the fiscal conservatives among us really are genuine in their complaints about cost, it'd make sense to see them being the most ardent defenders of the public option. Heck, if they were really serious, they'd be demanding that we shelve all this talk about offering a tiny number of Americans a public option (what the result looks like it's unfortunately shaping up to be) and start talking about outright emulating foreign systems of health insurance, which generally revolve around one national health insurance plan covering most people with the option of getting more care for extra cost (kind of like our Medicare or the French system). That's by far the most fiscally conservative way to deliver health care to all.

Yet what we've seen - from the conservative "Blue Dog" coalition or Evan Bayh's Blue Dog-style coalition in the Senate - is a tendency to attack the public option, or at least weaken it as much as possible. That doesn't make any sense if these people are really just about saving money and cutting the national debt. I don't know if it's cognitive dissonance on their part, or they simply have other things in mind - like an ideological fixation against the role of the government for the purpose of social welfare, or the amount of cash they receive in campaign contributions from the different actors in the medical industry that oppose a public option. But either way, it really does not make any sense.

And for that matter, neither does the fact that these same folks also seem to be the quickest to line up to support costly overseas adventures and to fight back against any effort to rein in corporate welfare or waste, fraud, and abuse in the military sector.

If this continues to be the case, I say they back off their pose as fiscal conservatives, because that label just isn't true.