Dialing 911 for Obamacare

posted at 8:09 am on June 19, 2009 by Karl
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More and more people are figuring out that Pres. Obama’s planned government takeover of the American heathcare system, once thought to be a shoo-in, is in “real jeopardy.” The Opinionator neatly sums up Lefty panic over Obamacare’s deteriorating vital signs:

“Health reform is, I think it fair to say, in danger right now,” wrote Ezra Klein this morning at the Washington Post.

“Attention fellow liberals who want health care reform,” wrote Jonathan Cohn yesterday at the New Republic. “You are in danger of losing the fight for universal health insurance. And it’s not only — or even primarily — because of the public plan.”

“Anyone else think the net result of health reform is going to be that insurance companies have even more political power?,” twittered Atrios this afternoon.

What’s got the pro-reform contingent worried?

“It’s because of the money,” writes Cohn.

I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so. By the way, Cohn also reported that the Senate Finance Committee has postponed its healthcare markup until after the July 4 recess. Expect a proposal considerably scaled back from the $1.6 trillion price tag of the committee’s first draft.

Meanwhile, the Blue Dogs and New Democrats have been holding meetings to see where they can agree on an alternative to counter what the “crazy liberal chairs and their crazy liberal staffers” are brewing in the House:

Both sets of principles are geared toward making sure any public plan won’t gain a competitive advantage over private insurance plans.

Of course, a public plan that cannot engage in unfair competition defeats the point of the public plan. Accordingly, one inference that might be drawn is that these two groups — which make up more than half the House Democratic Caucus — are positioning themselves to be be able to say, “I was not against a public plan… I was just against that public plan…”

As Obamacare’s condition deteriorates, progressives were looking for any bit of good news. They thought they found it in the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showing that 76 percent of respondents said it was either “extremely” or “quite” important to “give people a choice of both a public plan administered by the federal government and a private plan for their health insurance.” They are desperate enough to overlook how strangely the possible responses to that question were worded. They are also overlooking the question’s focus on “choice” in a country that likes choice and tends to associate it with freedom.

They are certainly not attempting to reconcile those numbers with the even split Rasmussen got when asking people whether it would be a good idea to set up a government health insurance company to compete with private health insurance companies. After all, Rasmussen is a tool of the Rethuglians. That the NBC/WSJ poll also showed an even split on the question of whether Obama’s healthcare plan (generously and misleadingly described) is a good idea or a bad one is purely coincidental.

Also coincidental is the latest poll from Stanley Greenberg at Democracy Corps, which could not produce majority support for Obamacare, even after “a robust debate” that somehow did not include the argument that a public plan will cause employers to drop their employees’ private plans. His deliberative poll shows, among other things, that the public’s basic attitudes on healthcare break down as Democrats vs. everyone else. It also shows that peoples attitudes on these issues are basically the same as in 1993. The latest Pew poll shows the same thing, except theat the results are a little worse for the Left today, with 14 percent fewer people thinking the system needs to be rebuilt.

All of which is why Greenberg, Nate Silver and others are dialing 911, by which I mean begging Pres. Obama to get out and sell, sell, sell a government takeover of healthcare. The White House/DNC internal polling was probably saying the same thing, which is why ABCNews is getting to air Obamapalooza next week — which is going to be super-balanced, with questions submitted through the Lefty-dominated Digg.com.

Unfortunately for Democrats, an Obamamercial will not change the fact that the legislative sausage-making is already moving away from a public plan. Indeed, the more Congress is forced to scale back its more grandiose fantasies, the less enthusiasm there will be for the effort among the activists and the nutroots. An Obamamercial will not change the unforgiving math of the CBO. As Pres. Obama once observed, “You can put lipstick on a pig — it’s still a pig.”

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