At the beginning of the month, I predicted that August might turn out be a bloodbath for Democrats. At the time, the Democratic self-containment on health care had dissolved, cranks were taking over constituent meetings, and that real anxiety about Obama had found a channel and political opponents of health care had an edge. And it was a bloodbath. No question: the White House was taken aback by the ferocity of the health care debate, the media was confused, activists were alarmed, and Republican enthusiasm shot up. But a funny thing happened on the way to the morgue...
The worst thing that could have happened to Democrats -- and the one thing that needed to happen in order to kill health reform -- did not happen. The Democrats held together. Moderates were not intimidated. Don't confuse their constituent meeting pander with changed minds.
Did more than a handful -- if any -- Democrats who were leaning towards voting "yes" on health care before August change their minds during August? Probably not.
Another irony: the public option debate helped. It helped by offering itself up as a sacrifice. The new Maginot line, drawn by advocates of a single payer system, turned out to be a bit of a feint because it was never the sine qua non of reform. Initially, given the GOP success (aided by progressive elites who essentially agreed) in framing the option as essential to health care, its putative failure and demagoguery seemed to be a significant blow to the White House. But -- and here is the key point -- it became something for the Blue Dogs to "oppose" and thus satisfy their constituents' concerns about reform in general.
Sen. Max Baucus's health care plan has been derided by many liberal activists because it seems to be a compromise upon a compromise.
For these activists, the debate itself has been damaging because it exposed the administration's willingness to give voice and legitimacy to sides in this debate that many liberal activists do not believe ought to be afforded those prerogatives, including Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee, PhRMA, and the insurers. The charge that Obama didn't stand up for his principals is a hard one to rebut, but the White House would rather have the bill they're probably going to get now and worry about Netroot anxiety later. From the start, the least convincing argument made to the White House about strategy starts with the premise that compromising with recalcitrant Republicans is inherently bad.
After August, under the worst case scenario, there is majority support for the following major changes to health care: real (albeit limited) competition in the insurance industry (even absent a public plan). A cap on what a person pays for catastrophic illnesses. An end to insurance company recision policies. Guaranteed issue. A basic benefit package. Significant subsidies to help people who earn as much as $64,000 a year pay for health insurance. Better cost and coverage incentives. And lots more. Say what you will about these reforms -- maybe they're incremental -- but they're a foundation for center-left policy in the future.
After August, conservatives have exhausted their repertoire of arguments and many of their demagogic tricks. Public support for significant health care reform as something worth doing remains high. Support for Obama's plan remains unchanged -- didn't grow, certainly, but didn't decline. Support among Democrats remains at 90%. Obama's message tomorrow night will be one that dovetails with what the American people believe: it's important to get health care reform done. How will Republicans respond to his speech? Rep. Charles Boustany (R-LA) can trot out familiar arguments about the Republican's "plan," which is in scare quotes because it was written solely to have something to show people who asked what the Republican plan was. (If Republicans had written a serious plan, one that recognized the reality of a Democratic Congress, then I'd drop the scare quotes.)
After August, Democrats have the momentum to pass the bill. And this point, made by Jonathan Chait, is key: whatever reservations liberal House members might have about the fate of the public option, by voting against final passage of a good (if flawed) bill, they would be directly hurting the vulnerable Americans they want to protect. A health care defeat could spell the end of the Obama governing experiment, the most progressive in 40 years. As Chait says, Dems can be weak-kneed, but they're not dumb.
The more I think about the events in August, the more I think of professional wrestling. Lots of chair shots, blood and taunts, plenty of theater, but at the end of the day, everyone goes back to the locker room, changes out of their tights, and goes to the bar for a drink.
Yeh, August went great for Obama and the Dems. You can always count on Ambinder for the latest WH spin.
But, if I may be so bold as to intrude a bit of reality here: You're assertion that support for Obamacare didn't change is simply untrue, no matter how hard the admin whispers it in your ear.
The latest CNN poll (one with a party breakdown very Obama-friendly, btw):
For the first time, a majority of Americans oppose Obamacare.
Just 21 percent think their family will be better off under ObamaCare, 55 percent think they’ll pay more for treatment versus just 19 percent who say less.
A majority thinks Obama wants the federal government to take over all aspects of our health care.
On whether Medicare recipients will likely be better off or worse off under ObamaCare the numbers is … 26 percent better off, 43 worse.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/09/02/cnnopinion-research-poll-august-28-31-health-care/
Maybe this is why the Dems' lead in party affiliation has recently collapsed?
http://www.gallup.com/poll/122693/Democratic-Advantage-Party-Affiliation-Shrinks.aspx
2nd to last sentence should read 'the numbers are...' Wishing for an edit function.
Er, you do realize that the very poll you cited states that public opinion on Obama's plan is "essentially where the public was in early summer", right?
In any case, the best way for the Dems to alleviate the fear over health-care reform is to get a reform bill passed, and to make sure it's a good one. Over time, the American people will come to realize that the right-wing fearmongers were lying all along.
And yet, the public option still polls quite strongly. Isn't it funny how polls don't mean anything when they don't represent our own personal opinions? I guess some people also feel that way about elections.
Now I know why I hate pro wrestling. And the way we conduct ourselves politically. It's all making sense. One of the reasons I campaigned for Obama was that he was the best shot we had at getting someone who could help us raise the level of our political discourse. So f#cking stupid.The problem with your poll results is that there is no Obamacare. . .as you may know, the legislation is being drafted by the House and Senate. This poll is asking about something that does not exist. Or, more accurately, it is measuring reaction to a plan that right wing pundits and politicans have made up and/or lied about.
What you can celebrate is that your party successfully scared lots of seniors into believing that their Medicare is threatened or lots families into thinking that they will pay more for their treatments.
But even then, half of Americans still want it.
And good luck with the Republican party affiliation. Funny, what I noticed is that people who actually claimed to be a Republican has stayed exactly constant at 27%.
Polls say people are scared of the lies the willy nilly right wingnuts have put out, NOT Obama's health care plan because there IS no plan to date.
The only thing the polls indicate is the "what-ifs". What IF big bad guvurmunt takes over health care? Then what? What if the insurance blood sucking leeches go out of business tomorrow? OH NO! The sky might fall!
I hear all the time how the US is THE GREATEST nation on earth, but...keep your hands out of my social security and medicare big bad guvurmunt!
If this were the greatest nation on earth we wouldn't be in this mess now would we? We wouldn't need the right wingnuts to scare the bajesus out of all our old folks and lie to us all to start a needless war.
Ahhhhh......and YET we WILL have healthcare reform, dispite the idiocy of the rightwingers who are so willfully ignorant and so cluelessly working against their own self-interest......as USUAL! Oh Lord, what fools these mortals be. (With kudos to Will Shakespeare)
With the public option all but dead, the question now is how much of the remaining reforms will the Democrats water-down on the way to passage of a final bill.
More points of reform will be lost before any bill is passed. Will what remains be enough to affect any significant change?
Health care for my Mom
This blog is to follow the responses from the government and the media following a letter I sent on supporting healthcare reform. I plan to post all responses no matter what the content as the healthcare reform continues to struggle for life just as my Mom does.
http://reformformymom.blogspot.com/
Well said.
Ambinder and Arianna are in full spin mode today.
If Obama sticks with the currently promoted Dem plans for health care reform he will lose and they will lose in 2010.
The people making the most sense on health care reform are conservatives, and not necessarily the ones in Congress. David Brooks, David Frum and Charles Krauthammer have the best ideas. That's all there is to it.
The Wyden/Bennett plan is the best Dem plan out there, which Brooks mentions. Why aren't more people talking about it?
Obama should make radical change to health care delivery in this country, but it shouldn't involve more government spending or another government health care program. The ones we have right now are breaking the bank.
"...and Charles Krauthammer have the best ideas."
Good catch, hard to believe Mr. Armbinder would so foolishly ignore anyone with a track record as successful as Krauthammer's! Especially when it comes to predicting all the things Obama. I mean Krauthammer's predictions have been plainh spooky accurate.
No, Krauthammer isn't right about everything - foreign policy, for one thing. But he has some suggestions that at least sound like they would cut health care costs - more than we can say for the House bill that was analyzed by the CBO.
"Let me offer mine: Strip away current inefficiencies before remaking one-sixth of the U.S. economy. The plan is so simple it doesn't even have the requisite three parts. Just two: radical tort reform and radically severing the link between health insurance and employment."
Both of those reforms would cut health care costs.
In my opinion after all the shouting matches and nonsensical scare tactics meant to scare those with less than an eight-grade education, the Republicans did not gain much, instead they look moronic. Even if the healthcare reform bill is passed without a public option, I still think that President Obama won the fight, and it is a prelude for a public option in the future. I guess baby steps are not bad after all. http://www.mydochub.com
The bottom line is that we WILL get the Trojan horse into the fortress. The GOP/Libertarians may crow about having defeated the bill as loudly as they like, but it will be inside the gates. Social Security and Medicare were not the bills we have today when passed. They were improved through ammendments, and that will happen with this healthcare reform. It is not a victory at all for the corporate money grubbers. This will become the bill we hope for within the next decade,maximum.
... at the end of the day, the journalists, corporate lobbyists and politicians go back to the locker room, change out of their tights, and go to the bar for a drink ... and wake up the next day to begin screwing over Americans on another issue.
Ambinder is wedged so deeply into corporate "journalism" (I'll remove the scare quotes when it becomes real journalism), that all he can write about is the BS around him.
I agree with Marc. Before August health care reform was going to get done, now after August nothing has changed. Apart from the public option, there are many pieces to the reform that aren't being debated that will benefit the American people, and will be major victories for the Dems. This president is looking at the long term, not the day to day.
Declining public support or manipulative polling verbage?
Even with the Democrats totally inept presentation of their "plan" for health care reform, it was very hard to believe that the populace would flop from 76% approval of a public option to 43% in about 8 weeks NBC) as reported in huge headlines recently.
The original poll question was “Do you favord having a choice of a public health care plan administered by the federal government that would compete directly with private health insurance companies?” On the second round of polling the word “choice” was dropped, making it sound on the phone as though this was not being proposed as an option, but as the essence of the program --thereby causing the incredibly large change in the response, that was dutifully reported by gullible (we hope) media.
The Democratic leaders were too busy chartering government jets for their August sabbaticals that they didn’t notice the critical one-word change in the questioning. But someone at Move-On.org did. And re-ran the survey immediately. With the original wording. And lo and behold, despite all the furor at the Town Halls, despite all the denunciations by the Republicans and despite all the coverage of the cataclysmic drop by the media… by God, 77% OF THE PUBLIC STILL FAVORS HAVING A CHOICE OF A PUBLIC OPTION!
Who is being represented by our representatives?
Obama....a Kenyan by blood, Hawaiian by birth. Taking the long view. The long distance runner. Almost certainly outsmarting the impulsive cretins of the rump GOP.....Like the Trojan Horse analogy
Um - the Trojan Horse analogy. What is Troy in this Analogy? You do realize the Trojan Horse caused its downfall, right?
An excellent explanation of WHAT we need to accomplish in Healthcare Reform can be found here http://www.brookings.edu/reports/2009/0901_btc.aspx. HOW do we do this? By using the finest physicians, best scientists and evidence-based-medicine from around the country and the world to come up with “Best Medical Practices” electronic medical workbooks using:
XML (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML) ,
XML schema (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML_schema) ,
XForms (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xforms) and
web-services (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_service) (savings Director Orszag's 700b, no medical errors) which are IETM Class V compliant documents (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IETM) that when filled out are checked for accuracy and completeness in real-time and saved to a third-party (savings malpractice 100b). The workbooks are created, maintained and continuously updated (always learning) by the regional Health Information Technology Research Centers, CDC and HHS in conjunction with the Health care Industry to provide an effectivity rating for the different treatments, the ability to produce a prognosis and cost of treatment in real-time. In addition, Senator Sanders 400b in administration costs would be greatly reduced because we would only have one set of forms country-wide and they can be easily automated. Also because IBM (http://dita.xml.org/sites/dita.xml.org/files/IDCMSBlue.pdf) and the DOD for their interactive electronic training manuals are already using these technologies the CBO can score the savings.
The only thing that August has shown all of us is how irrelevant the Republicans and their supporters are in terms of this healthcare reform debate.
Polls are strange things.
Gallup's poll today shows that the American public is evenly divided as to whether they want health care reform AT ALL, with a slightly higher number for "no reform." Needless to say, the "no reform" side has more intensity.
Maybe Obama should just change the subject and talk about something else on Wednesday night!
Looks like the insurance industry execs got exactly what they wanted: a guaranteed 40+ million new customers paid for or coerced by the government, the government to blame for rate increases due to no prior conditions and no limits on payouts (insurance isn't a charity), and no real competition - they long ago learned how to avoid competition and with no new kid on the block (a la iPod and iPhone) there will be no market constraints on prices.
I say execs are happy because underwriters won't be needed any and even the few case managers kept on won't be paid much. The execs have known for years how to overpay themselves.
With healthcare now primarily a business and business's goal is always to maximize profits, there is little to look forward to without a public option at a minimum. Ambinder is kidding himself if he thinks more competition will come out if this bill. Maybe we will be able to improve a poor compromise in the future, but with business discovering that government is easy and cheap (and will happily pay for its own purchase) and the Supreme Court about to make it completely legal, I'm not optimistic.
So what we will get is more people covered at a higher cost paid for by the young and healthy and taxpayers. The health insurance execs will move up in the ranks of the super rich, taking a bigger slice of GDP (we're already spending twice as much as other developed countries and getting much less for our money). Congress will get paid back richly in campaign contributions. The American electorate will be shown once again to be easily duped numbskulls.
When I read about Dems that love Obama can I assume that none of you have jobs since he promised that everyone would share America's wealth. Oh I forgot, he has put EVERY American in deep debt so there won't be any money to give away. What a shame (that this clown got elected).
Krugman, in the NYT, is right: if people are going to be required to buy insurance, there has to be a 'safety valve' option that is not a Big Insurance private for-profit company. There has to be a public option.
Otherwise this will properly be seen as a give-away to a business that is already--may I say--"reaping-without-the-e" consumers.
This is why if a public option is not offered, the President will have to explain very very carefully exactly why everyone should happily be forced to submit to the Health Insurance Lobby in buying mandated insurance.
If the explanation is 'because we're going to wash for-profit insurance companies until their dirty fleece is whiter than snow'--then I suspect voters will know who is really about to get fleeced.
Please secede, already. Your mind has already made a clean split from reality, so why not do it in body and spirit, as well?
It is amazing that people listen to people whose healthcare is taken care of for life deciding for the rest of us. I have healthcare and I have money. I do not have time to waste with Doctors who treat to earn money from insurance and do not try to heal you. I do not have time to make 5 appointments to pad their pockets until they have made enough money from my suffering. This has to stop. http://www.mysocialurl.com/r/vanwes/home.html
To Monica and certain other commentators
Next time, before you start to write some childish scrawl about your political opponents' eighth grade educations:
Take a deep breath; go to Greg Mankiw's blog; read what he, Marty Feldstein, other Harvard economics professors, the current Dean of the Harvard Medical School and others have to say about the concepts apparently embodied in Obamacare; ask yourself whether you believe that academics like them, on the right, or equally qualified academics,like Paul Krugman et al, on the left, have the better of the argument on various points... and justify your arguments in an intellectually rigorous manner...
And if you can't begin to address these issues on a comparable intellectual plane, it will just reinforce the perception that, by and large, the left is motivated by emotions and rhetoric and the right by thoughts and analysis -- as much of Krugman's journalism, IMHO, seems to demonstrate.
You see, posing as the king of the jungle and seeing yourself as the enlightener wont do alot of help with some other sets of scholars who think this reform will actually do more good to the general American populace.I stick with Monica's point of view,republicans(losers) had better find better things to do with their sorry a*s and just let this go for future sake.You know luck might just shine on them soon if they comport themselves with the liberty of shedding antagonizing politics and policies.
On the contrary, am not exactly one of those obamacare hardcore faithfuls but analysing it for what its worth gives me an insight that this may not be what the most of Americans want to talk and think about at the moment,but it will be what they will appreciate alot in a few years to come.
some other sets of scholars who think this reform will actually do more good to the general American populace.I stick with Monica's point of view,republicans(losers) had better find better things to do with their sorry a*s and just let this go for future sake.You know luck might just shine on them soon if they comport themselves with the liberty of shedding antagonizing politics and policies.
East-
I'm assuming that post was a joke.
Surely you cannot be aruging that the people screaming about death panels, illegal immigrants, and tyrannical government takeovers of doctors' offices are the level-headed ones in the room.
There are many rational, academic arguments in support of national single payer health-care. But the best argument might just be before your own eyes. That is, that every industrialized country has some form of univeral health-care and in none NONE of these countries is there even a small movement to get rid of it and move to a U.S. style profit-based system.
http://www.miamiherald.com/1280/story/1222961-p2.html
Very good points by former Clinton aide.
CCComment's post illustrates precisely what I'm talking about.
First: I cited Mankiw, Feldstein and other critics of Obamacare. CCComment either ignores their existence or (quite falsely) attributes to them positions which in fact they don't hold.
Second, CCComment ignores widespread public criticism, within countries like the U.K. and Canada, of the health-care systems of those countries.
CCComment, have you read Mankiw and Feldstein? Do you understand their arguments against Obamacare? Can you rebut a single one of those arguments? Can you cite counterarguments from Krugman or others that you find convincing, and tell us why they convince you?
EVIDENTLY NOT -- or you wouldn't be reduced to writing what you just wrote.
Take a deep breath -- ask yourself if you're proceeding in a spirit of rational argument or just asserting a bunch of prejudices informed by your hatred of those who have the temerity to disagree with you.
Many of us in this country hoped that Mr. Obama, as President, would take the high road, listen to his opponents, rebut some of their arguments, fail to rebut others, and learn from that exchange of viewpoints. Tomorrow night may be his last chance to engage in that kind of leadership, and I hope he will do so.
As for posts like CCComment's post, they evidently fail to perceive that there is a high level of debate going on between some pretty bright people on both sides of this particular dispute and frankly I don't think CCComment's post is, on an intellectual level, any higher than the arguments he takes aim at.
Marc,
How can you say that Obama hasn't lost support for his health care "reforms"? I for one supported him wholeheartedly until recently, but now the Democrats have completely lost my support on this issue.
When Obama was campaigning, he said he would oppose fines and support the public option for people who couldn't afford insurance.
But now, the Baucus plan gives us the exact opposite: No public assistance for people who make too much money to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to afford private insurance, and if you can't afford insurance, then it's "tough ta-ta's" to you, because you're going to get hit with a stiff fine of up to $3,800.
Here in Texas, we have a similar plan for auto liability insurance. This plan has been in place for most or all of my adult life, and it has yet to result in universal coverage. Instead, it has resulted in thousands of poor people across the state getting hit with stiff fines when they can't afford coverage, and insurance itself is less affordable, because our insurance companies are operating under a mandatory system in which the consumer doesn't have the option to refuse to do business with them if the industry's rates are too high. If anything, under this system there are more uninsured Texas drivers, not less.
California, on the other hand, has a "Pay at the Pump" plan, which provides universal basic auto liability coverage, which is financed by a tax on fuel.
Gas costs a few cents more in California than in Texas, but I'll gladly pay the extra nickel a gallon for the assurance that if some guy runs a red light and hits me tomorrow, I won't have to worry about whether he's insured.
Forget the "death panels", forget the "goverment takeover" rhetoric and all of the other hysterical hype that spouts from the Fox News Channel. I speak as a strong supporter of universal health care, and as someone who has never voted Republican -- not even ONCE -- in the 23 years since I first voted, when I say that this Baucus plan is a horror the likes of which Stephen King couldn't dream up on a bad mushroom trip, and if the Democrats in Congress pass it and Obama signs it, I for one will never vote for another Democrat for as long as I live.
--- Gos
--- gos@nerosopeningact.com
"Nobody here but us heretics..."
East,
While I share your hope for a more serious dialogue regarding this subject, I can't help but feel you are missing the point of CCComment's post (as much as he/she is possibly missing the point of yours). I imagine those on both sides of this argument would have preferred to see President Obama "take the high road, listen to his opponents, rebut some of their arguments, fail to rebut others, and learn from that exchange of viewpoints", however the loudest voices (and sadly those that have gained the strongest foothold in the public consciousness) seem to have been not those of Mankiw, Feldstein, Krugman or Obama, but rather those puerile and reactionary elements that CCComment cites. This, I feel, is in large part due to the nature of the coverage of the"Town Halls" and the subsequent fascination with a handful of red-faced screamers offering little in the way of a coherent platform.
I look forward to tomorrow evening's speech as a new (and hopefully more focused) point of departure for future discourse. We'll see...
Thanks, TTAAMM, I should have developed my point better. Glad you and I share a desire to see analysis and civility rear their heads a bit in this debate.
As I see it, one problem President Obama has in seeking to create some kind of legislative solution to at least some health care problems is that respectable analysts don't agree about the likely efficacy of various proposed solutions, such as establishing a public option, while other proposed solutions that do appear to have widespread acceptance among economists of all political persuasions, such as removing the tax advantages of employer-sponsored plans, aren't on the table for reasons of practical politics.
In crafting a package that can command a consensus in Congress and among the voters, the President needs to treat his opponents seriously and either convincingly demonstrate that his proposals are better thought out or at least show that he has a plausible basis for his own views. Otherwise it will appear that he's cobbling together a package that lacks intellectual integrity and merely rewards a coalition of special interests such as union members and the tort bar.
Characterizing his opponents as people with eighth grade educations, rather than rebutting the criticisms of his plan raised by a portion of the Harvard economics faculty, would be a grave mistake; wishing away opposing views, rather than engaging them, would only engender a suspicion that Mr. Obama has no plausible case to make and it would certainly offend people whose support he is going to need.
We ought to coin a phrase -- like the Malkin Award -- for the fallacy that proceeds as follows: (1) some of my opponents (town hall protesters, anti-war protesters, whatever) are zealots who have been carried away by their passions and spout simplistic slogans that I can easily rebut, (2) therefore I can ignore all the legitimate, articulate criticisms of my own positions (health insurance reform, whatever war is going on today). Or put another way, the existence of the Weathermen didn't disprove Senator Fulbright's criticisms of the war in Viet Nam.
"...such as removing the tax advantages of employer-sponsored plans, aren't on the table for reasons of practical politics."
"Otherwise it will appear that he's cobbling together a package that lacks intellectual integrity and merely rewards a coalition of special interests such as union members and the tort bar."
Why do I (we) continually expect that politicians will actually do the right thing by Americans and for our country rather than parcel out favors to their political backers? I guess that's why people are so cynical and easily disappointed.
Written like a true schill. I guess we need to redefine the word "survive". Much as Clinton redefined the word "is". If you mean Obama wasn't impeached, I guess he "survived". Much like the rest of our bought and paid for Congress, he should be recalled or impeached for not prosecuting the last administration. I could go on but there is little point...at this point.
If you rob from Peter to pay Paul...you can always count on Paul's support
msully --
Obviously I'm speaking from the Greek side, we'll say they're the Democrats. Sure it brought Troy down, but Troy would be the GOP in this analogy. You do know, right, that when we get this done the GOP will essentially have the final nail driven into its coffin? Just like Medicare and Social Security, the Democratic party will hold sway for at least two generations. Finally, a chance to heal the country from the fascist (in the Mussolini "corporatism" mode) demogogues!