Obama Mismanaged Health Care Reform Start To End

Obama campaigned on health care reform. It was the hallmark of his agenda and he took office with approval ratings that should allow a new chief executive to pass almost anything. But it began with failure with the appointment of Tom Daschle. That appointment was promptly withdrawn and Obama's mismanagement of this issue has been almost legendary ever since. And look at where he is with it today.

A double punch of persistent economic discontent and growing skepticism on health care reform has knocked Barack Obama's key approval ratings to new lows, clouding his administration's prospects at least until the jobless rate eases.

An ABC News/Washington Post poll shows Obama's approval ratings are sliding.Fifty percent of Americans in this ABC News/Washington Post poll approve of the president's work overall, down 6 points in the last month; nearly as many, 46 percent, now disapprove.

Several times the legislative bodies called out for leadership. But there was never any - not even once. Does he want a public option, or does he not want it? You couldn't even answer that question today with any genuine conviction other than perhaps, well he'll give it up if it means getting a bill.

From a hallmark agenda item to a bill, just any bill will do? That's failure writ large. And the failure is Obama's and no one else's to own, even if he'll try to massage the message, or slink away from it, somehow.

And any bill he does get will prove to be a disaster, more likely to anger both the Right and his Left base than it is likely to make anyone happy at all. If there's any one word to sum up Obama's first year, even if he does get a bill, any bill - it's failure. And Barack Obama is the failure's name.

Comments

[x11b1p]

I'll give you a B+ on this Dan.

[Sissy Willis]

It's not important what YOU give Dan on this, but what he gives HIMSELF, x11blp. ;)

[Scott]

Is Obama capable of leadership? The fact is, he has never provided leadership to any organization. Even when he was an adviser for ACORN, he didn't provide leadership. It was just talk, talk, talk. Ditto in the IL legislature. Much smaller ditto in the Senate, since he missed most of the action. He got elected for one reason... no, two. 1) he was a clean cut articulate black man, as Biden pointed out and 2) he reads a good speech. (I hesitate to quote Biden. I mean, what if Patterico decides that I'm a racist for quoting a racist.)

[x11b1p]

Sissy Willis I agree - Dan how would you grade yourself and don't be to hard on yourself!

[Mike2Cents]

So just one word sums it all up?
How about one word for anytime you attempt to analyze anything at all to do with this administration...predictable.
Just another tirade against Obama - there's nothing that has happened or that will happen that would/could ever alter your conclusion.
Maybe go ahead now and write your 2011 Afghanistan & Obama piece.
Or are you pretending to wait and see what actually does happen in that case...and then call it a failure?

[Anon]

Mike,

I can tell you right now that whatever bill the Senate passes WILL be a failure because there is no reasonable cost containement strategy...there is just today a new piece that sheds light on the CBO shenanagins of keeping the cost of the bill below $1 trillion when it realistically would be over $2 trillion.

Since Medicaid and Medicare are already on the road to insolvency, then it would clearly be a failure to add yet another mandate that doesn't do any better job of controlling costs. And please spare me the "they can do it in France" line of propaganda, this isn't France and our system doesn't merit much comparison.

Thus, I am able with high confidence to say that health care reform is a failure, since I consider making any plan cost effective to be the top priority, adding millions of people to the insurance rolls makes liberals feel good, but eventually a way to pay for it long term will need to be found...and that means ever more taxes on the middle class.

[Anita]

Re: Mike2Cents - Just another tirade against Obama - there's nothing that has happened or that will happen that would/could ever alter your conclusion.

Perhaps, this liberal's viewpoint about Obama might surprise you:

http://www.americablog.com/2009/12/gop-had-at-most-55-senators-during.html

[unseen]

Dan,

I think your wrong on his first mistake IRT to healthcare. the first mistake that impacted healthcare was signing the stimulus and busting the budget to the atmosphere. then signing the pork laden spending bill with 8,000+ earmarks was his second mistake. This made socialized healthcare DOA because the money was not there. It now became a numbers game trying to fit the bill within a $trillion instead of crafting policy it became an accounting game which lead to cuts in mediucare, death panels, rationing, trading away this to get to that....etc.

If Obama would have kept the budget to within a certain degree, cut taxes and got the economy back on its feet he could have no had to worry about the price tag when it came to healthcare.

[Mike2Cents]

Anon -
Fair points...but to Anita's post, Bush was able to get some things done - yes. But when it came to health insurance/care...his attempted and accomplished nothing.
As far as Dan's concerned, it's all over, said, and done.
But it isn't. I have no idea how I will feel about all of it at that point - likely I'll like some of what was accomplished and be frustrated by what was not.
But I will feel good knowing that 'do nothing' wasn't the approach.
I provide health care for all my employees - thanks to the lack of regulation over the insurance industry costs have just skyrocketed. So for arguments sake, maybe there really does exist some conservative/republican solution to that - but GB and company did nothing at all about it.
Any 'solutions' be offered now are just in response to the dems putting this solidly on the agenda.
And they ain't asking the insurance industry to write the bill....

[Anon]

To some extent I agree, Obama's handling of the stimulus put a big dent in this image of him as going to go through the fed. budget line by line and weed out waste...not only did he not weed out any waste but he allowed Congress to pack all kinds of crazy stuff into that bill.

Then, to further hurt his image as not being a 'tax and spend' Democrat, the WH's statements and record keeping on stimulus jobs is something of a joke with people reporting that a lawmower purchase created 50 jobs and agencies across the country reporting raises as saved jobs. It undercuts the message that the stimulus was anything but a porkfest with all the money going down a government black hole.

Next, instead of providing strong leadership on financial regulation to prevent the bankers from breaking their pretty capital markets toy, he dithered. His team has done virtually nothing to deal with the financial catastrophe.

Lastly, again, instead of providing leadership, all he did was give speeches and basically punt the hard to work Congress. I would think that almost anyone that has ever paid attention to politics would know that leaving anything, let alone something as complex as health care reform, to Congress would result in a debacle. The WH has been sending mixed messages all along because truth be told Obama doesn't care what is in the bill he just wants a bill passed so he can take credit for it. By not having a clear set of priorities for Congress he lost control of the debate and the more that details trickled out, the less Americans liked the idea.

Now, the best thing they can hope for is a bad bill that eventually Americans with jobs or businesses will reject, and this will hurt the Dems down the line.

[Anita]

Mike2Cents, how come 85% of people happy or satisfied with their health-care?

[rrpjr]

But the signs of this central absence of character and/or leadership was evident to anyone who looked at his history. He'd never put himself at risk in the name of any issue -- at least not to the "tipping point" when conviction trumped personal cost-benefit analysis. He assiduously avoided positions (voting "present" so many times) that would draw him out or make uncomfortable demands on him. He knew instinctively that his best chance for a future was in the cultivating the image of the cool cipher.

Obama is the anti-leader. His appeal was exactly that, I think, at least to the group who put him over the top -- the young and ignorant. He was the slacker-king, a subconscious slap in the face of modern society's expectations. How else can one explain his wild appeal to young people -- they, like him, had accomplished nothing yet wanted it all, all at once.

One more thing rarely mentioned: he's lazy.

[Anon]

Mike,

The insurance industry is basically in a problem of their own making, I have little sympathy for them...when HMO's became popular the "theory" behind them was that paying up front for preventative care was going to result in enough savings to pay for for itself and generate profit to boot. But, they were wrong. And so they had to cut care in order to make money.

Preventative care does not, overall reduce net costs, this is a myth first propagated by HMOs and then taken up by liberals, but the data isn't there. However, what the HMO mindset did was create a generation of people who think that their insurance should pay for EVERYTHING.

We need to roll back what health insurance actually covers...OMG I know this is heresy, but...health insurance should cover unforseen problems, a major disease or accident, hospitalization, it should subsidize prescriptions.

It should not fully cover physician visits or any other preventative care. This would introduce some reality back into the market because if the patient has to pay real money, isntead of "pretend government money" then costs are going to have to go down to what the market can stand...hospitals wont' be charging $200K for a procedure and hospitalization, they will be charging something more realistic and that cost will be shared between the insurer and the patient.

I wholeheartedly agree that the insurance industry can't continue to raise premiums 10% or more every year and get away with it...but we also need to remove some constraints..get rid of community rating and let insurance company rates reflect the ACTUAL RISK...that means that if you're 55, a smoker with high cholesteral and a family history of heart attack, you are going to pay more for your insurance..that's only fair. We should allow for out of state competition among insurers.

I agree that you should not be unable to get insurance because of a pre-existing condition, but realistically if someone is on dialysis or has cancer they are going to cost a ton of money...so there has to be a way to make this viable from the insurers perspective..maybe a high risk pool that would be subsidized by government. But, forcing the insurers to insure everyone at roughly the same cost means they can only make money by raising rates.

[Mike2Cents]

Well, pretty sure that poll gave 82% as that figure.
And that # goes down when the question gets asked differently.
And it also said 23 percent say they or someone in their family put off medical treatment in the last year because of the cost. When they finally do seek treatment, the costs are higher...leading to...higher insurance costs. Then of course there's all the folks without insurance.

But, % of folks this, % of folks that - everything is just hunky dory?
6 years ago my avg health cost per employee (of which I cover 75%) was $3800...it's now $9300. Same plan.
I was just informed that family coverage would be going up to $2900 a month...that is 35k a year..and a whopping 40% increase from last year.
I 100% just can't afford that. But they have NO options if I drop coverage (well they do have the option of spending a lot more outside of a plan).

[Drider]

Anita, that was a decent article written by a flaming liberal, who had many things correct but missed the gist of the reason on why the Democrats are struggling to pass these insane bills.

The bills they want to pass are entirely unamerican, the vast majority of Americans are livid that such bills are still being bantered about, the Democrats know that many of them will have to fall on their swords by pushing for them, hence, the chaos.
The bloom is most certainly off the rose, Americans are snapping out of their stupor and rejecting the facade of our POTUS being a centrist and see clearly that he is a full fledged Marxist.

The majority does not want anything to do with the real Obama nor the Democrats who now find their tits in a ringer, where their career choices are reduced to inflicting devastating harm on the American public via these crazy bills and continue to look like they are steadfastly with the president, and lose their jobs-----------OR------------They vote against the POTUS which will be seen effectively as turning their backs on their president, put off the severe damage to the people and suffer the consequences of doing so by having the presidents hired thug (Rahm Emmanuel), shut down military bases and/or cut funding to the degree that the job becomes unbearable.

So to boil it all down, the Democrats are not used to having to make career ending decisions for any reason and now, no matter which way they go, they probably will be out of a job next election and it is all due to the fact that they thought they could get away with tilting this country into some kind of Socialist nation.

[Dan Riehl]

Well, X1 - I've adopted the liberal's pass/fail system for this week. So, I'm lookin' good!!

[Mike2Cents]

Drider -
Really, un-American?
Well, says you
Just to be clear - it is you who THINKS 'they thought they could get away with tilting this country into some kind of Socialist nation".
And your boogeyman "full fledged Marxist" is anything but.
Just to remind, the anti-Bush crowd went over the rails when they called him a 'fascist' - this is just the other side of that coin.
And just as silly.

[uknow]

Hillary campaigned on healthcare reform. Obama had no choice but to go along. She destroyed him on it then, and he's getting destroyed on it now.

[Dave H]

Obama failed to lead the way on reforming health care, and this is so inconsistent with his career because . . . um, he did a real bang up job in not doing anything different at Harvard Law Review (oh, and discovering that if you don't use forks, it's not lobbying). Liberals foolishly chose ideology over practicality for a job that is at least 90% practical and 10% ideological (interestingly, this is precisely the reverse for law professors and other academics these days), and now they're more disappointed than anybody. If it weren't so bad for the country, I'd say it serves them right.

The current health care reform effort is like a train curving around the bend toward a collision; the passengers on the inside, Republicans, have seen it coming for some time, but now even a few on other side of the car are seeing what a trainwreck this thing is and are jumping off. Dean, Burris . . . who's next? Just a couple more could stop the train, to start again some other day with a truly bipartisan effort. But if it's going to crash, let's hope it takes the whole academic-socialist agenda with it. Maybe Obama is liberalism's Casey Jones.

[JohnR22]

I can't help think what might have been possible if Obama had a Republican congress...or if he gets a Republican congress in 2010. I think back to Clinton's presidency after 1994 when a lot of terrific centrist legistlation got passed. You know...centrist...broad bi-partisan support that the majority of american voters actually supported. What a novel thought. We definitely need health care reform, but we need a centrist bill that addresses cost reduction (not just containment) as the focal point. But nooooo; instead we started out with a radical Left House bill and a crazy Left Senate version. A bill that started waaaay Left and has drifted back toward the Center...pleasing nobody in the process.

[Ran / Si Vis Pacem]

M2C... So predictable, as always. Go ahead and post your rebuttal to Dan's future post. You've already written it.

Dan... Great post. Thanks! "If there's any one word to sum up Obama's first year, even if he does get a bill, any bill - it's failure. And Barack Obama is the failure's name."

Look to Rahm Emmanuel emerging as the fall-guy if Obama does manage to fail to get anything.

On the other hand, this bill, compromised and larded as it is, is the perfect Vampire to run against in 2010...

[Neo]

So far I've seen just about every excuse coming from the Democrats: victim, too easy, yada yada yada. The only excuse that seems impossible to come from their lips is "bipartisan".

[Mike2Cents]

Ran -
I'm guessing you don't have much of a dog in this fight - but you enjoy the political gamesmanship of all of it.
So, nice for you.
You wanna see Rahm Emmanuel fall and Obama fail...a lot of other folks have other concerns.

[Anon]

Politics is politics, Mike.

The GOP is in a better posistion if the Dems don't pass any health care legislation, wishing that our system of government was less political doesn't make it so...it is roughly the same reason why the Dems voted to approve the Iraq War, not becuase they believed in it or that they believed Saddam had amassed an arsenl of WMD sufficient to threaten the US, but because they knew politically, to vote against was suicide.

I want to see Obama fail because I believe his policies are destructive, I most especially believe that his ideas of HCR are destructive...so if he "succeeds" in getting his policies in place I believe it will further hasten the decline of this country, so why would I want him to succeed? Now, if by succeed you mean that his HCR would be able to insure everyone in America and not cost the middle class more money, then I would be all for that, but that is about as likely as me winning the lottery or Detroit going to the superbowl, its wishfull thinking divorced from reality. My view of reality holds that Obama's policies are destructive and so I want them to fail.

If he had stepped up to the plate on the financial markets and put forward a good plan, then I might have cut him some slack, but he didnt'...it is the worst case scenario..in an area where we desperately need new regulations and a new template, we've got Goldman Sachs running the policy and in an area where, while we do need reform eventually, health care isn't a crisis, and what we get, again, isn't new thinking but the same old same old Democratic strategy of spending money today and letting tomorrow take care of itself.

[SacTownMan]

It's Xerxes' socialist policies that have to fail. More importantly his puppet master Soro's MUST fail in his attempt to convert this country into a "one world" socialist order by destroying the dollar and our capitalistic society that he and the other "progressives" hate so much.!

Barry is just the tool to implement his plan. He is on track to be the single biggest failure since Carter and his legacy will be one of allowing this country to lose it's standing as the leader of freedom and Democracy in the world.

A do nothing POS that demonstrates you don't have to be a REAL leader!

Just be a good speech reader and ride the MTV crafted message of Hope and Change and hope they don't catch on!

Barry can only feed the bullshit to those idiots dumb enough to have voted for him in the first place!!

Failure is to to kind of a word to describe the great Xerxes!!!

mmmmmm!!!mmmm!!!!mmmmm!!!!

[Mike2Cents]

Anon,
To this:
"I want to see Obama fail because I believe his policies are destructive, I most especially believe that his ideas of HCR are destructive...so if he "succeeds" in getting his policies in place I believe it will further hasten the decline of this country"
Ok...so let's say he 'fails' and we just continue on with the status quo -
You see no 'decline' in that, nothing in policies as they stand now as 'destructive'?
I take from much of what you write that your not a fan of the status quo - so how do we move forward from this muck? And yes, politics is politics - and Obama & co. are listening too much to the insurance industry as much as the repubs listen only to it. I think we have yet to see the real turning point on this issue - the infighting w/ the Dems is a good thing, as there certainly should be more that 2 sides to all this. And hey, maybe the repubs will even see this as their opp to come to the rescue with some actual ideas.
As far as HC not being a crisis - I think that's what the last administrations approach to the financial industry....

[Mike2Cents]

typo:
As far as HC not being a crisis - I think that's what the last administration's approach to the financial industry was....

[Anon]

Let's be fair, nobody but maybe Rabini and a couple other people predicted the financial debacle and to date, Barney Frank still won't admit his own role...that isn't to say if the Democrats had said "Hey Bush, these credit default swaps are going to ruin the financial markets they need to be regulated" that Bush would have listened, we can be 99.99% sure he would not have listened. But, the point is, nobody was calling for regulation, everybody, Demcrat and Republican was on the gravy train.

I have been saying for years that the government should give block grants to a handful of states to run pilot programs..a lot was learned via the Massachusetts program [though most of it wasn't very supportive of universal health care being cost effective], but nevertheless it was as real world example of doing X and getting Y as the result. Why not spend 5 years letting the states try a variety of approaches and see what happens?

Also the Democrats have a habit of calling any plan they don't approve of "no plan"..there are plenty of ideas out there from conservatives, a number of which I've mentioned in this thread but they don't get to the holy grail of everyone having as much helath care as they want, so they are rejected as 'status quo'

I am also for decoupling health insurance from employers, though again, this can't be done overnight, it would take at least a decade.

I'm not even necessarily against a French or Swiss type of system, but NOBODY can give me any idea of how we get from here to there in reality..what are the steps, how will it work, its all pie in the sky "they can do it in Europe so we can too" talking points.

Lastly, we need to fix health insurance, but my idea of "fixing" it is to first be truthful about why costs are out of control and it isn't just price gouging on the part of insurance companies..once we really understand/admit the "why" then we can go forward and make changes to control costs and THEN and ONLY THEN should we move to add millions more people to whatever the ultimate plan is. It does not make sense to claim that HCR is necessary to bring costs down and then do nothing to bring costs down. I know and you probably know in your heart that the Democrats don't care about the costs, and that is why I stopped voting for Democrats because they are totally financially irresponsible and have proven so time and time again, and are about to prove it one more time with this stupid plan+no job created stimulus+no reform bank bailout+no reform auto bailout+no reform mortgage bailout.

[Mike2Cents]

On costs -
I have an HSA set up myself, and have employees that are with HMOs, along with Doctors in the family.
It is almost arbitrary what the cost (to be more precise, charge) of a procedure is. With the HSA, you're able to see what the insurer's negotiated price is - e.g. a Doctor's visit.
His charge may be $250 - but the NR rate I'll owe is $61. But then there are those on a different plan that have an NR of $112. Keep in mind that the charge to someone without insurance is $250.
And I don't see that the current bill addresses this...which speaks to your Anon's point about 'costs'.

[Philip McDaniel]

Very interesting discussion, Anon & Mike. Would that our elected officials discuss issues in the same way...we might get out of some of the messes we are in and avoid others that are still over the horizon.

I look forward to hearing more from both of you -- provided that it continues in this civil vein.
:)

[vitamin k]

Im curious why is it you seem to make overlooking the obvious an art form. Ok, she appointed a commission and it seems the result of that commission was a federal moratorium on enrollments making Alaska the only state so deignated. Does this help you understand "so poorly managed, the state cannot assure the health and well-being of the people they are supposed to serve, a new federal review found." Psssst that is after her appointed commission. Or lets make it easier for you to understand, SHE SCREWED THE POOCH THE COMMISSION FAILED AND DID NOTHING. Gee I wonder if the right is so use to incompetence that saying we formed a commission and then did nothing sounds like a step forward to them.

[heathleyor]

developed significantly consensus points increasing extreme levels

[lakinziala]

http://deliciouslivingmag.com http://www.grist.org slow southern http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov

[Meadow]

When blackmail, extortion and bribery are the 'accepted' forms of coercion to insure enough aye votes, then there is little we, the people, can do. That is, until we vote out the blasted spineless and overly aggressives and replace them with common sense conservatives.

http://www.thepalination.com/2009/12/vote-aye-or-else.html

[Gadema Korboi Quoquoi]

Whether you are Republican, a Democrat, or an Independent, Everyone's Primary Goal in the Healthcare Reform Battle must be, to Used HIT Solutions, to CONTAINED our SkyRocketing Healthcare Spending. We must used some of the Stimulus Funds, to Build Intelligent Infrastructure Services for: Smart Grids, Transportation Systems, Broadband, and Healthcare IT. This Investment will Enabled New Jobs Creation and Economic Recovery

Healthcare IT, now it is the time for us to Implement HIT, with Harmonized Inter-State Laws/Policies for Protecttion of Individual's EHREMR/PHR.

Proper Deployment of HIT Solutions and Training will Increased Productivity (i, e, medical data mining/warehousing, risks treatment, service delivery), Efficiency (i, e, medical errors, redundant and inappropriate care), and have a Costs Savings of around 20-30% of our Annual National Healthcare Expenditures (2008, $2.5 Trillions).

The Engine of Economic Growth in this 21st Century is "Broadband." We can start by, Deploying a pure Packet-based, All Optical/IP, Multi-Service Ntional Transport Network Infrastructure, using Optical Ethernet throughout thhis National "Network of Networks." This will Connect All Optical Ilands, Nationwide.

The Investment if this "Network of Networks', in addition to New Jobs Creation and Economic Recovery, can also Serve as a Business Driver for: e-Commerce, e-Education, e-Healthcare, Energy Systems, Transportation Systems, Social Networking, Entertainment, etc.

This type of Investment is like the Investments that were made in the past, in Electrification of Rural Areas, and the National Transportation Inter-State Highways, which Increased Productivity and our GDP.

Please See: www.gkquoquoi.blogspot.com for Summary Deployment Plan, for the Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN).

Gadema Korboi Quoquoi
President & CEO
COMPULINE INTERNATIONAL, INC.

[Tom Degan]

I don't know what kind of health care reform will come out of this session, but I strongly suspect it won't be much. There is, however a silver lining behind this very dark cloud. I am reminded of the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Don't be embarrassed if you've never heard of it, there really isn't a hell of a lot to remember about it; a mere pittance, really - a scrap of leftovers tossed out to "American Negros" (in the parlance of the age) in order to appease them. But it made the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 - the one we remember - all-the-more easier seven years later.

We'll live to fight another day.

www.tomdegan.blogspot.com

Tom Degan