How To Pass Health Reform: Play Small Ball

IBD Editorials ^ | September 4, 2009 | PAUL HOWARD

[Kaslin]

President Obama is staking the success of his health care plan on his personal popularity with a prime time address to the nation on Wednesday. House Democrats will be cheering him on and encouraging him to double-down in his support for a public plan option.

For Obama, this is the wrong message and a big gamble. He won the election by promising to govern from the center but has let Congress tack hard left on key issues from the stimulus to global warming.

The backlash at town hall meetings and tea parties this summer is evidence that the president needs to reach out to moderates and conservatives and scale back his health care ambitions. This may not be Obama's Waterloo — the Democrats have the votes to ram legislation through Congress — but it might turn out to be a Pyrrhic victory.

Playing the blame game has been the administration's favorite tactic of late, but the administration's wounds are self-inflicted. The president's initial approach — letting Congress draft bills based on White House "principles" — has backfired badly.

This became glaringly apparent on July 16, when CBO chief Doug Elmendorf testified before the Senate that none of the bills drafted in the House or Senate "proposed the sort of fundamental changes" critical to controlling government spending. For a president who argued for months that health care reform will save money and reign in the deficit, it was a devastating blow.

Switching tactics, the administration now prefers to talk about health insurance reform and bash the insurance industries' "windfall profits."

[Kaslin]

[ryan71]

Blasted from both sides but he cannot turn his back on the left. This (public option) aint over.

[BunnySlippers]

Don’t let it happen. They will add the public option later.

[lmr]

The president and Congress pushed too far too fast on health care reform and are paying the price for it. By focusing on incremental solutions to specific problems, the president can rally support and hit the "reset" button on his presidency — while there's still time to do it.

One small problem with that notion. The Totalitarian Communists in Congress AKA "Progressive Caucus" have drawn a line in the sand and said that they will not vote on any bill that doesn't include the public option.

The only choice for Bambi now is to ram this thing through using reconciliation and these idiots may be fool enough to try that.

Otherwise, they will have to abandon the issue altogether, and like Clinton be forced to move to the center and to the right for the remainder of his term if Bam-Bam wants to beat his club for another four.

[FlingWingFlyer]

It’s “health reform” now, huh?

[MarkL]

If the dems actually wanted to "fix" problems within the health care and health insurance world, it would be SO EASY. Simply choose pieces that any reasonable person could agree are broken. Then craft small, simple legislation that fixes the problems. Continue this trend until the problems are solved.

On the other hand, if what they want to do is attach all sorts of "features" that have nothing to do with health care or health insurance, and want to do nothing more than expand government control into the daily lives of people, or even try to destroy the economy of the US, then they are certainly trying to do that!

Mark

[socialismisinsidious]

Socialized Medicine aka Universal Health Care daily digest PING LIST

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[Munz]

all they want is their foot in the door, after that they can come into the house and rape the people at their leisure.

KILL THE BILL.

National insurance companies across state lines is the answer.