Unraveling ObamaCare

[babylonsister]

:loveya:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-perspec0726healthjul26,0,6250374.story

Unraveling ObamaCare

By Charles M. Madigan
July 26, 2009

As sure as Hillary Clinton was elected president of the United States . . . whoops! That was supposed to happen but didn't. This is an important object lesson for those who are lining up with the doubters about President Barack Obama's health-care push.

It surely looks dark for the forces of health reform, with opponents shouting "socialism" and enemies trotting out stories they heard from people who heard from people who heard from Canadians about a good elderly fellow who couldn't get the procedure he needed to keep him alive because the system just decided he was too danged old and not worth the cost and so he was put on an ice floe and pushed into a lake someplace, dying alone. Damn those socialists!

There will be lots of that ahead of us.

Hyperbole is one of the most interesting products of any kind of big political change. Just now the verbiage is robust in Congress and on talk radio and on conservative blogs. It's why some people deeply believe we are about to mutate into a big version of Norway, land of sardines and social democratic policy.

All of this needs to be kept in some context.

Remember this: Barack Obama was the force behind the most audacious presidential campaign in modern history. The effort simply did not roll the way people expected it to, because not only does Obama have the best three-point shot in political history, he does not give up.

These days his opponents paint him as a socialist. A few months ago, he was said to be cuddling up to terrorists and hiding his true Muslim heart.

snip//

Even as that process plays out, clarity will be developing. The actual shape of health-care reform will begin to emerge in some detail.

Then the president will embrace what he likes, what he can support, and send very clear signals about what he doesn't want. He is letting Congress do the very messy part, which includes all those predictions of failure.

In the end, I suspect, Obama will find a way to give Congress all the credit (or blame, whichever is called for) on health reform. If it works, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) will have his name all over it.

If it doesn't, then we'll find out whether Obama can be suitably ugly in addition to being engaging.

[Undercurrent]

1. Great article!

Thanks for posting it, babylonsister.

Barack Obama's political journey is littered with those who underestimated him. Opponents who thought he was weak, just a collection of fancy speeches, or could be broken are road kill now.


More from the article:


He wants to do two things that are easy to explain but hard to achieve: control health-care costs, which are terrible and promise to get worse, and get just about everyone covered, somehow. Getting everyone covered somehow is nice, fluffy campaign-trail talk, but costs are where the real action is in this battle. It's the kind of thing that points right to an array of special interests who make a fortune from health care. They don't like it. Hence the fight.

This is good strategy on Obama's part.

The opposition is fairly boneheaded about the smoking-out process. They simply latch on to the side of their special interests like lampreys and start sucking, a process that makes them highly visible. It doesn't take long to tell who is hauling water for various health-care providers. One White House aide told the story of discovering why it will be hard to cut the price of oxygen containers, which apparently have their own member of Congress to make sure that is not a part of reform. It's that gritty on the Hill.

Instead of getting specific, which would be fatal because it would let his enemies know exactly where to stick the knives, Obama is pulling on the levers of public opinion to create pressure to force Congress to make some difficult decisions.

[babylonsister]

2. Thank you for adding, and thank you for

'getting' it. Anyone who votes against this President might be disappointed. I hope. :hug:

And compared to the past disaster, I'm happy and humbled he's representing us. Warts and all.

[Undercurrent]

3. :)

The world seems to be divided between those who expect to much of our President, those who hope he will fail miserably, and those of us who realize what a monumental set of obstacles he has to overcome to accomplish anything, but also appreciate the uniqueness of his keen mind, and strong fortitude.

The thing that has impressed me all through the primaries, and during the general election is that the man is willing to learn. This is a rare quality in the big ego choked world of politics.

[karynnj]

5. Nicely said

Of the first group, many seem unwilling to not have the same willingness to learn or to be flexible. The fact is that by the end of the year, Obama will likely have signed the biggest improvement to US healthcare since the 1960s. To compare it to campaign promises of others - which are given as goals and which do not require any proof that they could be passed is silly.

Here, people are risking losing what should be the satisfaction of greatly improving a major problem because they are unwilling to see a victory in anything less than 100 percent of what they want. It is disheartening that I see many people accepting RW characterizations of provisions not yet written.

[karynnj]

4. Nice article

Obama's success in quietly building up the forces needed in 2007 to seriously challenge HRC, who was thought to be a prohibitive favorite for at least 3 years shows that he is willing to build support quietly and steadily. Here, he needs the support of slighly more than half the Senate and the House. Public opinion is important, but secondary. If the public is strongly for or against something, it can change the vote of some legislators, but the President making the case to them directly has impact as well.

In the midst of all the gloom and doom articles, this article - with the analysis in the NYT opinion yesterday and the fact that there may be a resolution in the "how to pay for it question" are glimmers of hope that a bill will be written that is a major improvement over what we have that can pass.

I really wish the people blinding applying litmus tests - like "single payer good, all else bad" or "public option good, nothing else worthwhile" read this NYT analysis. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/opinion/26sun1.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2 While it is important that we back the effort to try to get a public option, there are many other aspects of this bill that are praiseworthy.

On how it might be paid for, the over the weekend articles and comments on talk shows, shows their is substantial bipartisan interest in Senator Kerry's proposal which would put an excise tax on insurers on the portion of policies about the average cost in their region or some other threshold. (Even if the insurance company pushes the entire amount of this tax to whomever pays for these policies, it would simply reduce their tax break to that given people with average policies.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/27/health/policy/27insure.html and http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124863649016781945.html

Reading the Chicago Tribune article and these articles make me far more optimistic. They were an antidote to all the "we were betrayed" threads here - including a thread of people thinking things would have been better had John Edwards won!

[asphalt.jungle]

6. The 'this way or no way at all' crowd need to fully comprehend this sentence

"One White House aide told the story of discovering why it will be hard to cut the price of oxygen containers, which apparently have their own member of Congress to make sure that is not a part of reform. It's that gritty on the Hill."

[grantcart]

7. exactly right - but many of those who will cry betrayal have already drafted their response

regardless of the details of any bill that is passed.


And there is another unspoken reality. Getting everything that is needed and worthwhile will not be possible in the initial bill. Once the principle of Government responsibility for health care and the perception that it is a right will create a growing public demand.

[Phx_Dem]

8. Sweet. "Suitably ugly" works for me!!

But I'd like to see it happen now against the Blue Dogs!

This is for the progressive blogs that keep bitching about no specifics. Maybe instead of spending all their time bitching, they should have a little faith trust the man they elected and realize that he usually gets his way because he knows how to strategize. He always has a plan, and so far he has won every battle.

Instead of getting specific, which would be fatal because it would let his enemies know exactly where to stick the knives, Obama is pulling on the levers of public opinion to create pressure to force Congress to make some difficult decisions.