Is Obama Losing Health Care Reform?
It is easy for Democrats to fear the sky is falling in. Grim headlines proclaim that voters are nervous and Democrats are fighting among themselves over health care. National public opinion surveys reveal a 10 percentage point decline in voter confidence in President Barack Obama's overall leadership. There are unresolved policy questions about health funding mechanisms, a public option, and an employer mandate. All this evokes flashbacks to the spectacular collapse of Bill Clinton's reform efforts in 1994.
But Obama already has demonstrated much greater political effectiveness than Clinton. The new president is more popular than Clinton was at the six-month point. In mid-July, 1993, for example, Clinton had a 41 percent approval rating in the Gallup poll, much lower than Obama's most recent rating of 56 percent.
Four of the five relevant congressional committees actually have passed health care reform, which is not something Clinton was able to achieve. Obama's leadership style of delegating specific policy decisions to Congress has led to committee approvals and given himself maximum room for bargaining and negotiation at the end of the legislative process.
When you look at public opinion polls, there is little evidence that opposition scare tactics are working. Sixty-six percent of Americans in a recent CBS News/New York Times survey favored a "government administered" public health insurance option. This is despite private insurance industry anguish over a public option. And 55 percent believe the federal government should guarantee health insurance for all Americans. Critics who claim America should not expand the role of the government are losing that argument with the general public.
Even more striking are poll numbers revealing that voters have much greater confidence in Obama on health care than congressional Republicans. For example, 55 percent of Americans say Obama has better ideas about reforming health care, compared to only 26 percent who think that of congressional Republicans.
Obama's greatest challenge is determining how to pay for reform. House members worried about costs made changes that scaled back the original program by 10 percent. This saved around $100 billion and kept the overall price tag under $1 trillion. This is not exactly a bargain price, but it helps make the argument back home that legislators are doing something about reform costs.
Ultimately, Democrats will succeed in passing health care reform because the risks of failure are too high. When the 1994 Clinton effort collapsed, conservatives were emboldened and liberals alienated. The result was a spectacular GOP comeback in that year's election that gave Republicans control of the House and Senate.
If Democrats lose health care reform, the biggest victims will be Blue Dog Democrats. Since many of them represent conservative areas, they will be the ones swept out of office if liberals are disillusioned by failure and stay home in the 2010 elections. Moderate members who oppose health care reform because they worry about specific provisions should understand they have more to fear from failure than success in passing comprehensive reform.
Victory in passing a bill will give them a major platform to brag that they did something no American president has done in 50 years. In the end, the Democrats' October surprise may turn out to be congressional passage of health care reform.
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The public option is non-negotiable. I repeat the public option is non negotiable. Why I say this is because we cannot allow the people we elected into office to push and mandate 47 million uninsured Americans to go into private insurance and call it HCR. That would be a 1 trillion dollar bailout for the insurance companies which is their wet-dream. That is basically what Kent Conrad and Max Bucus wants to do.
The insurance comapanies have shown over the years that they cannot be trusted. They exclude people for preexisting condition and dump those who suffer to pay their premiums when they get sick. There is no way that we can trust them to do the right thing, which is why We MUST have a public option in which you pay a premuim and you are not excluded for preexisting condition or dumped when you are sick.
The model should be such that the tax payers do not fund the public option like medicare. Let it be self sustaining with premuims and be non-for profit. If that is done, we have a choice. Either you choose the murder by spreed sheet insurance companies or you choose a public option. This is simple folks and we must stand by that. If the president, the senate, and congress exclude the public option there is no reform.
No, he lost it when he said he was taking single payer off the table. In other words, with his opening move.
15 years after Hillarycare and he failed to learn the real lesson of that debacle: just find what works and go after it with everything you've got. Bill Clinton did that for the remainder of his presidency. How ironic that the man who fought so hard to cast himself as the anti-Hillary should make the key strategic move of his first term a re-run of her biggest blunder.
Here's the key sentence to remember for those "Blue Dogs" out there and they should take note.
"If Democrats lose health care reform, the biggest victims will be Blue Dog Democrats. Since many of them represent conservative areas, they will be the ones swept out of office if liberals are disillusioned by failure and stay home in the 2010 elections.
The Republican "birthers" with their limited IQs aren't going to give you credit for killing health care in the next election and it would be best not to delude yourselves into thinking they will.
Obama took 19 million dollars from the "health sector" last year, more than any other candidate.
We will get nothing but health insurance reform, structured in favor of the insurance cos.
They will tout it as something else, but read the bill and you will see, there is nothing in it that will secure quality, affordable health care for every American, nothing that will curtail profiteering off of sick people, and nothing that will stabilize the cost of delivery so that it is sustainable.
Profits and costs will continue to soar until 2013, as more and more Americans are out of work, and losing their homes, not to mention their way of life.
Meanwhile Congress continues to get theirs.
Much as been made of Obama's "tactics" associated with this process. There is only one tactic at work: let the members of Congress do the dirty work so he can say this is the best we could get done.
Everyone knows Congress willingingly does the medical industrial complex's bidding to the tune of 1.5 million dollars a day in lobbying.
While Americans are dying . . .
You see it exactly the way it is.
You have nailed it.
Single payer and the eventual dissolution or diminution of the healthcare industry is the only solution and Obama killed that with his opening salvo - all the rest is just chatter.
Since Reagan took office, health care costs have risen from 7% of GDP to 16%. They've had their shot and they've only confirmed what every other industrialized nation in the world has known for 50 years - the traditional supply-demand formulae of classical economics don't work in healthcare, can't work in healthcare.
Obama's fixation on pushing this through is just weird, really. What's the use of pushing through the same old broken system if it's just going to cost more and piss people off more? His critics who say leave well enough alone are right if this is the best he can do - and that's an incredible indictment of the cynicism of this "reform".
-Some say we don't have faith in government, others say, we will be forced out.-
What kind of music does this reform dance to ?
I share the opinion that unlike the insurer-friendly, baseless senate plan by 'some' members, only a 'strong' public option will be capable of getting the premium inflation under control and saving the U.S in turbulence.
To my knowledge, a dual system tends to deliver better results than a pure single payer system. Supposedly, to be or not to be might be up to the innovations like a pay for value program, otherwise, the forthcoming start-ups may fill the void with competitive deals. The competition based on 'fair' market value would be a beauty of true capitalism, not monopoly, an objective for anti-trust.
-Some say we don't have faith in government, others say, we will be forced out.-
What kind of music does this reform dance to ?
I share the opinion that unlike the insurer-friendly senate plan by 'some' members, only a 'strong' public option will be capable of getting the premium inflation under control and saving the U.S in turbulence.
To my knowledge, a dual system tends to deliver better results than a pure single payer system. Supposedly, to be or not to be might be up to the innovations like a pay for value program, otherwise, the forthcoming start-ups may fill the void with competitive deals. The competition based on 'fair' market value would be a beauty of true capitalism, not monopoly, an objective for anti-trust.
The Democrats need to come up with a simpler way of conveying what health reform means, otherwise it just comes across as some big government amorphous thing. Obama often gets too much into the details when he is talking about the plan. How about a simple ABC presentation? A = Access for everyone. B = Bringing down the cost. C = Choice of plans. Straightforward, covers the basics, and people can understand it in a flash.
What the insurance companies have been lobbying for is an individual mandate to buy private insurance from them. That doesn't desreve to be called reform.
The best we're likely to get is the public option with a means test, which the Republicans are calling "socialized" medicine for some insane reason.
As a real socialist, I have always resented the misuse of the word "socialism" in this way. There is no socialized medicine in America except the VA, the public hospitals, and Public Health Service. I also believe that Americans are far less fond of capitalism than the Republicans like to imagine, especially in a depression like thsi.
It's very typical of American history to have a hysterical conservative reaction to very modest reforms. Every reform cycle president from Jefferson onward faced an absolutely rabid conservative opposition. FDR certainly did in the 1930s, and did JFK in the 1960s. McCarthyism in the 1950s was a in many ways part of the conservative backlash against the New Deal, just like the Second Gilded Age of the last 30 years has also been a backlash against the 1960s.
Even Lincoln came to office in 1860 promising not to abolish slavery, only to limit it to where it already existed, but the South left the Union just the same. It was not the first time that conservatism in America overplayed its hand, and by following an extremist course actually helped bring about the changes it most opposed--nor would it be the last.
Of course, when the conservative eras roll around, they usually work hard to erase all the changes of the previous reform cycles, but they never have been able to do so completely--not when the reforms are truly popular. If we follow the same historical pattern, the next conservative period should be in the 2020s.
Thank you very much for that forthright, rational and POSITIVE assessment of the whole process, and thank you for complimenting the President on his tacticts. Even on this very blog today there are those who are undertaking de facto psychoanalytical judgements of the President's mindset and character--as usual effecting those judgements from the comforts of leathered armchairs in Ivory Towers. The President has managed this impossible, excruciatingly complicated issue, as you so well point out, the only way he possibly could in order to ensure passage of a final health care bill: delegating to Congress. He is waiting for the compromise Bill (from all five committees) to move into Conference, and then you will see him come forward on firm positions. Do I wish he would take a stand earlier, on a public option, for example? Yes. But considering the confusion and misinformation out there in the public, the air needs to be cleared and a Bill needs to be put forward in order to be debated and perfected. The President served in the Senate and knows that Congressional involvement is the key to any major piece of legislation. Thank Heavens for the Brookings Institution--always sharp, to-the-point, wonderful scholarship.
This is not leadership . . .
I think there is a lot of fear-mongering going on and incorrect information being distributed via media, emails, blogs, etc. I have received some of these scary Republican emails from associates. What I have found is that the comments contained various forms of media are frequently taken out of context. I have read the first 45 pages of H.R. 3200 http://tho
Phone Numbers
Comments: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414
Passing health care reform will depend in the final analysis on the definition of "reform".
As any good politician can tell you and some already have "It all depends on what the meaning of "is" is"
Healthcare reform is a win, win situation for Democrats just like the childrens healthcare reform was a win, win situation for Democrats in 2007. And now we have a much better childrens healthcare than if we would have compremised with the Republicans, as long as Democrats don't lose their nerve.
If the Democratic party still sought to represent the majority of Americans then yes, it would be a win win for them. But today's Democratic party represents wealth and the status quo. The party, led by Obama, has done everything in it's power to crush real health care reform. Instead we're going to get some insurance tweaks and call that "reform".
Will they pass meaningful, real health care reform? That is the question.
No doubt something with the label "Health Care Reform" will pass to much fanfare. But, it will fall far short of what anyone serious about the issue would call real reform. The usual suspects--big pharma and the insurance companies--will make out like bandits.
Agreed.
There will be no health care reform, just health insurance reform.
Yes, that's what the WH is telegraphing.
The insurance companies can't be reformed. Only retired.
No, there won't be that either. There will be more of the same but more expensive, as the insurance companies pass the cost of compliance with new regulations on to their customers and blame Obama and the Democrats for it.
Obama has lost this one, and he endangers us all with a resurgent GOP with this mess that he and Congress are creating.
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