Momentum matters in football, in litigation, and in politics. The Democratic Party has rallied since the Scott Brown shock. After his macho Marlboro Man win over Martha Coakley we all went into a swoon, appalled, in my case, by the voters. But necessity and vote counting and Obama's reversion to campaign mode soon took over. He rallied for the State of the Union. A turning point was reached with Obama's impromptu tour de force at the House Republican retreat.
Things took a decisive turn at the White House Health Care Summit when the Republicans presented their Party of No face and the Democrats met them down with patience and coherence.
Now the big win with the House passage of the health care reform bill. This graph reflects that. It is the generic poll: do you prefer Democrats or Republicans in the Congress.
The present moment: Democrats over Republican 44.4% to 44.3%. Now that the Democrats have something to defend they will find the going much easier, I predict - and the blue dogs who couldn't bring themselves to vote for reform will find themselves weakened. Rule of thumb: Dems who voted `Yes' win, `No' voters lose in November.
Thanks to TPM
I had hoped from early on that health care could be reinvented for a generation coming out of this recession. I can't accept how poorly our health care serves the American people. Every where I look in health care I see inefficiency of poor organization. What frustrates me most about our successes at federal reform is they ignore the simplest solutions to these inefficiency's. The most central organization is almost certainly financing, which still goes widely ignored.
ReplyDeleteWhat I can't believe about our disorganized health care systems is how many successful single-payer programs internationally were modeled after our own Medicare system. The poor and elderly were financial pariahs when Medicaid and Medicare were adopted. The fifteen percent of Americans without health care are seen as red meat to an industry that increasing looks like nothing but carrion feeders.
We still live in a country where corporations went single-payer before the government did. Self-insured companies cover more Americans than Medicare and Medicaid combined. They assume all the liability for their employee's health care while having a plan structured and managed by a private insurance company, while only paying around 3% of premiums. What's so significant about this system is it represents the power of relatively small groups of people to organize their health care while taking profit out of financing.