When will Barack Obama and the real leaders in the House and Senate finally come to the realization that the health insurors and pharmaceutical companies are the bitter ENEMIES of health care reform? My guess is never. Barack Obama has become totally mesmerized by the odd and unachievable concept of "bipartisanship," seemingly unable to understand that it requires Republican cooperation to succeed and he will NEVER obtain it. The House and Senate have become so dependent on insurance and pharmaceutical industry campaign contributions that, with only a few exceptions, they are wholly enraptured in the thrall of their lobbyists.
I am now of the firm belief that Barack Obama needs to withdraw his current proposal and start all over. He has fallen into the same trap that ensnared Hillary Clinton back in 1993. His proposal (or more accurately "Congress's proposal;" Obama has misunderstood the nature of her mistake, ascribing it to White House authoring of the bill rather than to its nature itself) is now so complicated and arcane that it is not possible to decipher whether any given individual will find it to be beneficial to his or her own situation. This is exactly what Hillary did, and although the purpose in both cases was to try to make reform palatable to health insurors, pharmaceutical companies and health care providers, it only made easier for the enemies of health care reform to employ their highly sophisticated public relations engines to kill it. Complexifying it made it easy for the enemies of reform to overstate its costs and raise fears of its effectiveness even while explaining what its impact on anyone would be, which takes many more words than any news sound bite or bumpersticker will permit.
In order to sell health care reform, the benefits must be made apparent TO THE PEOPLE. This is not possible if the whole thrust of your argument is that, for most people, things will remain the same. Why, even Republicans falsely assert that they want to change things. But that's what Obama is doing -- touting continuity rather than reform, and heralding Federal budget savings rather than the savings and benefits that individuals would enjoy, and it has no chance whatsoever to succeed.
Indeed, there is now a very real threat that any bill reported out of Congress will contain a mandate for everyone to have health insurance, but no public option. In other words, it will FORCE all of us to become customers of the health insurors, a situation they greatly desire. This will make things much worse, both in the short term and in the long run, but this seems to be all we will be able to get out of the current effort. It is WORSE than nothing, will take money OUT of the pockets of our least privileged and give it to the enemies of health care reform, and will do nothing in any way to reform the practices of insurors, drugmakers and health care providers that have gotten us into this mess.
The "mandatory" coverage ala mandatory auto insurance coverage will fail. Period.
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