Obama Driving Dems Left on Healthcare Takeover

posted at 10:51 am on June 4, 2009 by Karl
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Pres. Obama apparently has decided on a partisan takeover of America’s healthcare system:

President Obama on Tuesday affirmed his support for the creation of a government-sponsored health insurance plan, but he acknowledged that such a plan would sharply reduce the chances for Republican support of legislation to overhaul the health care system, Democratic senators said.

Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) and centrists like Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) are clearly feeling the White House pressure. Baucus had been trying to play down the notion of a public plan, in hopes of finding compromise with Republicans.

The Obama administration is also looking to empower the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission to set Medicare payment rates, conduct trial programs, and fund policy initiatives — perhaps even as an annual up-or-down package vote in Congress, akin to the military base closure commission. It is a backdoor way of enforcing comparative effectiveness research of the sort that kills cancer patients and requires real colonoscopies instead of virtual ones.

Obama has become fixated enough on trying to ram through a government takeover that he is now willing to consider mandates on individuals and employers, and taxing employer-sponsored health benefits.

The problem for Obama — and the Dems he is pressuring — is that none of this is popular with voters. The Wall Street Journal summes it up nicely:

Democrats are trying to rush the largest entitlement expansion since LBJ into law with a truncated debate and as little public scrutiny as possible. At this point all they’ve released are the vaguest “policy options,” not concrete specifics. Yet the Senate plans to begin marking up legislation next week, maybe hold a hearing or two, then have something to the floor by the end of the month, votes by the August recess and a bill to the Oval Office by Thanksgiving. On the seventh day, they will rest. Mr. Obama had 24 Senate Democrats over for a White House chat yesterday to drive the calendar ahead.

It’s not hard to see why Democrats are trying to hew to this full-speed-ahead timetable. Their health overhaul will run up a 13-figure price tag at a time when spending and deficits are already at epic levels and hook up the middle class to an intravenous drip of government health subsidies for generations to come. These are not realities that Democrats want the American people to mull over for very long.

This is especially true for the majority of Americans who are generally satisfied with their coverage and doctors but worried about cost. They might get scared off if they were allowed the chance to realize that Democrats will do almost nothing to restrain rising health spending.

That last paragraph outlines the main obstacle over which the Clintons — and others before them — have stumbled. Polls almost always show a plurality of people say they want big healthcare reform and think it is a government responsibility. But when Democrats try to takeover the system, the same polls showing that people like their coverage and do not want government making it worse tend to foreshadow the outcome. This time, the Democrats are trying to sell reform cost-containment, but only 19% of voters believe it will reduce costs. Ironically, the big-government, high-tax proposals Obama is advocating (or willing to accept) now will only result in greater public resistance to the bills that emerge from the Congressional committees.

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