It is easy to blame Blue Dogs, Max Baucus, The Republican Party, the health insurance industry, Big Phrama, the AMA, and the Teabirthers for the clusterfuck that is "health care reform."
But, they are symptoms of the disease. Namely, they have been able to throw up roadblocks to a health care reform bill - a GOOD one -- because President Obama reacted too little too late to the mounting opposition. But, all is not lost. There is a way for President Obama to re-take the high ground and put strong momentum behind a serious and good quality health care reform proposal. I will diagnose the problem below, and then offer my prescription for what needs to be done.
First, President Obama has done a terrible job of explaining - in a quick easy to understand way -- WHY health insurance and health care reform is so important.
He's said we have to get costs under control and that we want to cover more people. He's also said its going to hurt our economic competitiveness. But, this doesn't go nearly far enough.
Most people in this country already have health care coverage. Most people are concerned that any new plan will somehow cost them more money in taxes or premiums -- or will reduce their health care benefits. They are susceptible to negative attacks on the Obama plan(s).
What few of these folks consider are the consequences of NOT changing the health care system.
They don't like taxes? Fine. The current system will cost between $1 and $2 trillion tax dollars more than any of the Obama health care plans currently being discussed. That's because even the weakest Obama plans control health care cost inflation better than the current system.
Thus, medicare and medicaid costs in the future will dramatically increase under the current system, and less so under a reformed system. A public plan actually curbs this inflation more than any of the other systems being proposed. (Not counting single payer).
So -- if people want their taxes jacked up through the roof in the next 10-25 years to pay for all of these costs -- then they should continue to oppose a public option and health care reform.
Don't like taxes? Ok. Then, the only other way to "pay for" all that health care inflation without reforming the system is to dramatically slash medicare and medicaid benefits.
So, if you like your medicare the way it is -- then support a public option and reform because your benefits will get slashed and burned unless you reform the system.
These are not matters of opinion or ideology. These are facts, facts, facts.
President Obama has not articulated these points in any degree of starkness. He's vague and assumes that people generally agree that reform is necessary. That's not enough. And town hall meetings and press conferences aren't going to cut it either.
President Obama will -- I think -- have to call a Joint session of Congress and give a State of the Union style speech to specifically call out the attackers of his plan and debunk the attacks. He will, most especially, have to lay out the stark reality of failing to act -- as described above.
But, he also can do a couple of other things at this Joint Session speech. He can say that he will VETO any public health insurance plan that is not at least as good as medicare.
This is a clever semantic trick in that, as we all know, the public option is basically medicare for people not otherwise eligible for medicare anyway. But, seniors are scared that the plans in Congress will weaken medicare.
So, along with pledging to veto any public plan that isn't as good as medicare, he should also pledge to veto any health reform plan that weakens medicare.
Part of the problem in all of this is that Obama has been too accommodating of Congressional Democrats and now the attackers and blockers of medical reform can just sit there and take potshots at any ole plan -- while Democrats and progressives don't have a specific plan to coalesce around and rally to.
Obama needs to put his ass on the line and tell the Democrats that he is going to throw them under the bus if they don't get the job done.