Two Democrats Nail Health Reform Problems

In the January 28 edition of Politico.com, two Democrats hit the health reform nail on the head. Patrick Caddell, former pollster for Jimmy Carter, and Douglas Schoen, Democrat pollster, strategist, and author of The Political Fix: Changing the Game of American Democracy, say bluntly and succinctly give three cogent reasons why the health reform law has failed to impress the American people.

Number One, the law is “anti-democratic.” It received no Republican votes, and three sneaky deals – the Louisiana Purchase, the Cornhusker Kickback, and the Connecticut U Con – made it possible. Its passage did not pass the smell test. If you believe in democratic bipartisanship and consensus, the law emits an unpleasant odor.

Number Two, the law fails flat on two false promises,

a. That everybody can keep their current policies, while in reality , employers are quickly dropping employees like flies from employer plans because it is now cheaper to do so.

b. That the individual mandate was a regulation of commercial activity and was not a tax, yet Democrats are defending it as a tax in the courts now that 28 states are challenging its constitutionality.

Number Three, the law does not deliver what the reform package the public wants,

a. Purchase insurance across state lines

b. Coverage pre-existing conditions (this being the one exception)

c. Portability from job to job

d. Support of malpractice reform

e. Incremental introduction of reform

f. Believable initiatives to hold down costs

The health reform law, in short, is a pig in a poke, an idiom referring to someone buying a low-quality pig in a bag because he or she did not carefully check what was in the bag. Now that the public is learning what’s in the law, they dislike it more than ever.