Obama is unfortunately under the delusion that the American people voted for him because his ideas of wealth distribution and governmental intervention were something the American people wanted. In attempts to pass the stimulus bill earlier this year, he used scare tactics, saying that "if we don't pass this, we'll be in a recession for longer than anyone can imagine." Feeling the pangs of the recession, the people yielded a bulk of their skepticism in hopes that throwing money at random projects, such as food stamps, Amtrak, $50 million to the NEA, would ease the economic woes of America. Although the Dow has had an overall upward trend lately, it's prudent to note that approximately 1% of the stimulus plan has actually be actualized. So much for giving Obama credit for saving the economy!
What Obama needs to realize is that the gloom-and-doom statement of "the sky's going to fall if we don't pass this massive spending program" only works once. Last time I checked, the American people voted for hope, and of course, change. Plus, the only reason why he is able to even put this at the front of the agenda in the first place is because unemployment is high, and many Americans have their health care provided by their insurer, meaning that once the recession lets up, nationalizing health care will be a non-issue. But getting off that slight tangent, using the same tactics in attempts to pass the health care bill will not fly. How do I know this? Take a look at the polls, and you'll see that Obama is floundering as he holds onto his health care proposal for dear life. Just looking at a few results from recent Rasmussen polls:
- 74% of Americans deem their health care quality either good or excellent.
- Only 42% of Americans approve of ObamaCare.
- As of today, Obama's overall presidential rating is at 46%.
It's not just Congress that Obama has to worry about. It's the American people, as well. Seniors are afraid of a big cut in their Medicare. The pro-life movement, which, until the proposition of this bill, has been relatively dormant. With a provision that will case the largest amount of governmental say in providing abortion since Roe v. Wade, Obama has given yet another constituency the right to be totally P.O.'ed at him. Then there are small business owners that don't provide health insurance for their employees. The last thing they want is the proposed 8% payroll tax on top of the 15% payroll tax they already pay now! Then there's that not-as-silent-as-they-used-to-be majority that just don't want their taxes to go up because of the inherent costs in nationalized health care. Oh, and a majority are happy with the quality of health care they receive. They just want some cost-cutting methods to take place [something which evidently wouldn't happen with ObamaCare].
If you want to go down in the history books as a great president, Mr. Obama, here's my advice to you: lay off the nationalized health care, or the bit of change I can guarantee you is that a lot of your fellow Democrats in Congress will be looking for new jobs as of November 2010.
You're too optimistic. As I believe Charles Krauthammer pointed out somewhere that all the President really has to do is jettison the public option and pass "insurance reforms" that are just as bad. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/27/AR2009082703262.html
ReplyDeleteAll they need to do is pass an individual mandate combined with de facto community rating, or explicit community rating and guaranteed issue. This will cause premiums in IL, which can be as low as 50-150 for the young and healthy to rise as high as 400-1000 like in NY. They can then subsidize it for the poor, and they have the public option without the public option; and when it falls apart because it has all the same flaws of the public option they will just blame free markets since people had "private health insurance". Then they can enact their single payer system.
Some Republicans will probably be stupid enough to go along with this, and if they don't there is always reconciliation, made all the easier by dropping the most controversial parts of the bill.
Once government is in charge, reform will be nigh impossible because they will just run around claiming the markets failed and that if the government didn't provide care no one else would. That is why all they want is their foot in the door, the real question is whether or not the leftist ideologues will be able to postpone their satisfaction with socialized medicine to adopt such an incremental approach.
As a side note, it is kind of silly that our side is teaming up with a bunch of medicare recipients who want "the government out of health care". Strange bedfellows indeed.
A decent post though, but the fight isn't over yet as people still need to recognize the dangers of things like federal insurance regulation and individual mandates, which is much harder to do than simply educate them on the public option. As well the people need to know that the status quo is not free market health insurance, as insurance is massively regulated at the state level such that it is really expensive in most states and one cannot buy a cheaper policy from another state. In addition of course are tax incentives for employer provided health insurance which reduces competition in the individual market, where the problems are, and exasperates the problem of pre existing conditions. Finally, Government controls 50% of all health spending through medicare and medicaid; that is nothing close to a free market.
I do agree that the fight on this one is not over. However, I believe that even if they try to pass it as "insurance reform," Americans would still see this as a Trojan horse for a single-payer system, which is something Obama promised on the campaign trail. Because many see Obama as a merchant selling snake oil, odds are that most attempts to socialize health care will fail on his end, hence my optimism, even after reading Krauthammer's article.
ReplyDeleteI will also agree that 50% government intervention is nothing close to a free market. If we de-regulate the health care system along with some tort reform, we'd see health care prices drop soon after.