Why Obama Lost Health Reform
By Ed Walsh (WHWG)
August 17, 2009 – 11:19 am
In early May, President Obama announced that a series of health industry organizations had agreed to trim $2 trillion in costs from their operations. The move signaled that the big players in health care were aligning with, not against, systemic reform. It may have been the high water mark of the president’s push for government control of health care.
Last week, President Obama was left insisting in multiple venues that his health reform plan would not result in “pulling the plug on grandma.” Over the weekend, several members of his Administration, including Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, said a government-run health care option – once the crown jewel of the Obama health plan – isn’t essential.
The key, Sebelius and others said, is that we have “competition” in the system. Well, guess what? Mission accomplished. There are already hundreds of for-profit and non-profit health insurance companies competing against each other in the US market, making exceptional health care available to the vast majority of Americans.
How did President Obama’s vision of government-oriented health care delivery go so far off track? How did this noted communicator end up decidedly on the defensive? I see two reasons.
First, the policy wasn’t good. The president overestimated the public’s willingness to overhaul a system that works pretty well. While most of us have complaints about our insurance companies from time to time, we’re aware that we generally get the coverage we want and are shielded from the full brunt of the costs.
Just about everyone would like to know that all Americans are covered by this same system of health insurance, not through a system that invests too much power in government controls. Government controls are synonymous with inefficiency and poor quality. Barack Obama couldn’t overcome a decades-long reputation overnight.
Furthermore, the cost of government health care would be monumental, and as the country struggles out of recession, facing mountains of debt that are only expected to grow larger in the coming years, spending a trillion and a half dollars to provide health insurance to perhaps 10 percent of Americans doesn’t sound like a great deal.
The second reason President Obama’s vision failed is because he never fully articulated it. The president made health care reform a centerpiece of his domestic agenda, yet to this day, few people know what he really wants a new system to look like. He offers vague ideas about coverage for pre-existing conditions and controlling health costs, but he’s left the details to others.
Maybe the president was afraid of getting the same treatment that greeted Hillary Clinton when she approached Congress with a painfully detailed plan for the US health care system back in 1993. But President Obama went too far the other way – offering nothing to Congress and outsourcing the writing of his signature domestic initiative to House and Senate committees.
The result, predictably, is that health reform plans got shifted as far left as possible in the House, while Democrats in the Senate have scrambled to keep up without alienating every single Republican. Because President Obama never defined what a proper health reform bill would look like, opponents of government health care have been able to define what the emerging bills offer, Nancy Pelosi turned the whole proposal into a war against insurance companies, and the president has been left protesting that he doesn’t want to kill your grandmother. Hard to see that as a communications victory for Mr. Obama.
Policy outsourcing is a trend for the president, and the consequences are getting worse. He left stimulus in the hands of Congress and now, even as the economy shows signs of life, he’s losing a public relations battle I didn’t think he could lose. Cap and trade was also given over to Congress and the House-passed version seems to satisfy no one, especially environmentalists. And now health care reform is looking as optimistic as grandma at a death panel.
What kind of idiot turns his policy over to nincompoops like Pelosi, Reid and Waxman?
Something will pass the House and Senate – how could it not, given the sizeable Democratic majorities? – and President Obama will call it health reform. He values hollow victories more than he values sticking to principle. But unless Republicans and moderate Democrats go wobbly in the next few weeks, the country will have averted a government takeover of health care and the private insurance and innovation framework will survive.
It’s good for the country, but it erodes the president’s reputation as a fighter and a winner.
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