The Coming Health Care Battle
As Sean Quinn of FiveThirtyEight.com points out, the just-ended, extremely heated debate over the White House’s economic stimulus bill is just an hors d’oeuvre. The bigger, bloodier battle for health care reform will be an even more contentious main course.
At the tail end of Friday’s briefing, Robert Gibbs gave a mostly unnoticed preview of this upcoming brutal health care fight, and the messaging that must be pitch-perfect throughout…
Asked whether he believed Republicans opposing the piece of the stimulus package designed to computerize health care information technology records were using “entirely political rhetoric,” Gibbs was blunt: “Yes, I do. I think it’s exceedingly similar to what we’ve heard going on the past two decades, yes.”
Get ready, Republicans, here comes the messaging:
“If I was for saving money, saving lives, creating jobs, providing less bureaucracy, I think I’d support an increased investment in health care technology … We have to move our health care system into the 21st century. If I was for saving small businesses money in their health care, I’d be for an increased investment in health care IT.”
I agree that messaging will be key. But so will having a workable plan.
Would you bet on any Republican backing any kind of health care reform bill put forth by Obama and/or House/Senate Democrats, other than moderates Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe and Arlen Specter? I sure as hell wouldn’t. I absolutely appreciate the commitment to fiscal conservancy that the GOP showed in opposing the stimulus plan. It’s not at all clear that the stimulus will work, and there are plenty of differing views on whether heavy spending is the answer to big problems.
But I also fear that sticking together/willfully bucking the Democrats may become an immutable point of pride for the GOP, no matter the merits of the bill in question. Opposing health care IT spending that would save massive amounts of money for the industry and for American health care users (which is to say, the entire country) and labeling it “pork” spending is being obstinate and combative at the expense of the country.
That’s to say nothing of their opposition to the STD prevention component of the stimulus plan, which also got cut, this time under the guise of moral high ground. Yeah, STD prevention programs would almost surely save much, much more money than the plan would cost. But it’s icky to talk about sex, and heaven forbid a teenager learn what a condom is. So let’s scrap it, have kids get genital warts and HIV, and we’ll have done our jobs as elected officials.
Obama’s plan will thus need to be a good one, such that he can collect the support of his party, as well as enough Republican line crossers, to gain approval.
While we’re here, tip of the hat to Sean Quinn, who’s become every bit the must-read that pollster czar Nate Silver is. Quinn did great work introducing us to the ground game element of the election, one which proved vital to Obama’s victory. It’s good to see him keeping the momentum going with regular, insightful analysis from Washington.
I might be wrong on this but does Obama really need any Republican support to get anything through? I thought he merely need make Pelosi and Reid happy and the rest is smooth sailing. I expect there will be Republican resistance in the health care debate, but in the end Republicans will not have much of a role or influence in the transformation of the US economy from capitalism to socialism. My question is how long will it take the country to recover from all of this. I imagine 20-30 years.
Well, that’s an excellent point. Really we’re mostly talking about the lack of a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. And it may well be that GOP Senators don’t have the cojones to mount an actual filibuster, especially one against a bill that promises to fix one of the worst-run systems in America, health care (rather than just making vague threats of a filibuster). If Obama firmly believes in a particular policy, and he’s getting his outstretched hand slapped again and again, he and the Dems are well within their rights to say “screw it” and just ram anything they want through.
It’s a shame all around, because both parties can bring some viable policy ideas to the table. Getting weighed down in partisan garbage is exactly what Obama pledged to avoid.
Great post Jonah. 3 things that strike me as particularly lame about the Republican response:
1. Healthcare IT actually has the potential to SAVE money, reducing gov’t spending, isn’t that a core Republican issue?
2. To David Leonhardt’s point the other day, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/11/business/economy/11leonhardt.html, this is one of those win-win investments where we spend now to stimulate the economy, but save later to help pay for the increased debt, one of their supposed key reasons for opposing the stimulus.
3. By being just flat-out against it, the Republicans remove from the public sphere and of the really interesting conservative ideas for healthcare reform. I’m pretty much a liberal, but it’s crazy to assume that Dems have a lock on good ideas, and I’ve heard in the past some really interesting initiatives from the conservative part of the spectrum that can’t possibly be part of the discussion if Republicans carry on like this. They just aren’t serious about our problems, and people are sick of that, they want real ideas, not politics.