Senator DeMint suggested that Health care legislation could be Obama's Waterloo. The President, playing the classic straw man game, has now used those words to try to suggest that the Republican opposition to the House legislation is "purely political." Well, firstly, any time groups of people attempt to design and decide on governmental options, there is politics. Indeed one could suggest that Politics is a process by which groups of people make decisions, even if not governmental. So with the President accusing the Republicans of "being political" we have a legitimate tautology. The plain fact is, anytime the members of government debate decisions, the debate is political.
The fact is, however, that President Obama knows that he is at risk of this plan does not get passed quickly, it is a serious risk. This is a complex issue, with may opinions about how it should be addressed. The complexity is obvious when the bill takes a thousand pages to define the proposals. There is no doubt that when the "devil is found on the details," the debate gets cloudy. The fast approval is not going to happen, and that means that the reform efforts could come to a halt. Clearly, the public in general is not unhappy with their health care and their health insurance. Couple that fact with the plain fact that the current proposals are a huge expansion of government that is clearly the creation of "socialized medicine" and the public is not generally in favor of the changes. Once the recess in Congress opens up the legislators to their constituents, the pressure will be intense to no make the changes.
President Clinton could always leave the failure to create a health care reform at his wife's doorstep; President Obama does not have that option,. This is his bill; even if he and the White House left the writing to the Congress. Failure on this major initiative will be a serious defeat...BUT, this is not a President who will walk away. He will return, and so will his proposals. Health care will not be his Waterloo because the the "Blue Dog Democrats" are likely to find a way to get on board with reform unless their constituents sound loud alarms. The recess buys opponents time; but is is not the end of the fight.: It is just the beginning.
The key if for the opponents to shift the debate from health care reform to health care insurance reform. We do not need to reform Health care, we need to reform the process of providing and paying for care. Once that becomes the focus, then we can have a serious discussion of what causes the increases in costs. We do not need to throw out the health care we already have, just to solve the cost problems. Reducing the negative impact of the plaintiff's bar, allowing cost effective health insurance options to be available to all, reforming the Medicare and Medicaid systems and find ways to place ownership of health on the back of the consumer instead of the employers. The administration and Congress have assumed that government is the solution, the opposition must make the case that government is already a major part of the problem, and that the solution can be found in the private sector by having government create incentives and eliminating barriers to cost effective options.
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