Health Reform 3.0: Lipstick On A Pig
Health Reform: The white coats showed up again at the White House, helping the administration ram health care reform down our throats. Can you have a bipartisan bill without a bipartisan vote?
It didn't work the first time, when the White House last year assembled enough sympathetic medical professionals to stage a photo-op in the Rose Garden trying to persuade us that, as the commercial goes, three of four doctors really, really support the administration's attempt to nationalize health care.
Rather than a grass-roots uprising of physicians, last year's event was a classic case of astroturfing.
Attendance was by invitation only, and 40 of the 150 physicians were said to be members of Doctors for America, a reincarnation of Doctors for Obama, an arm of the Obama campaign that boasts of having more than 15,000 members.
The physicians were told to bring their white lab coats with them to make sure the TV cameras captured the proper image. Those who just showed up wearing suits or dresses were provided with lab coats hastily rustled up. This year's event was similarly staged, and the stage props standing alongside President Obama might as well have been straight out of central casting.
Clearly the White House has run out of ideas, both on the substance of their bill and how to persuade the American people to swallow this bitter pill. Last week's health care summit failed miserably in its attempt to lure the GOP into taking bipartisan blame for this fiasco or to persuade the American people that the White House was genuinely reaching across the aisle.
The Democrats, who can't even reconcile their own differences, are left with the politically suicidal reconciliation process.
No less than the Mayo Clinic has given the proposed reforms two thumbs down. "The proposed legislation," Mayo says on its policy blog, "misses the opportunity to help create higher-quality, more affordable health care for patients. In fact, it will do the opposite."
"At stake right now," the president told the white-coated doctors and nurses gathered Wednesday in the East Room, "is not just our ability to solve this problem, but our ability to solve any problem."
Echoing Larry the Cable Guy, he said: "Let's get it done" — when it's more like: Stick a fork in it, it's already done.
"They've had plenty of opportunity to make their voices heard," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said of Republicans on CNN's "State of the Union" last Sunday morning. "Bipartisanship is a two-way street. A bill can be bipartisan without bipartisan votes. Republicans have left their imprint." Sorry, Nancy, but the party of no is about to become the party of "Hell, no!"
The White House says it is incorporating a few Republican ideas in Reform 3.0. "You can't add a couple of Republican sprinkles on the top of a 2,700-page bill and claim that it's bipartisan," said House Minority Leader John Boehner. Nor can you call it a bill that will provide better service at lower cost.
If President Obama, Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid want to see GOP ideas that work, let them look at the Indiana of GOP Gov. Mitch Daniels. After he was elected five years ago, a plan including health savings accounts was added to the plans available to state employees.
Indiana deposits $2,750 a year into an account controlled by the employee, out of which he or she pays all health bills. Indiana covers the premium for the plan. Unused funds are the property of the employee.
The system encourages both cost- and health-consciousness.
Daniels reports that state employees enrolled in the plan will save more than $8 million in 2010 compared with preferred provider organization alternatives. The state's total costs will be reduced by at least 11%. Better care at lower cost — isn't that the whole idea?
Real health care reform is possible, and voters may decide in November that they know how to get it done. |
