Should Obama have pitched health care differently? Will Kennedy's death make a difference?

Source: The AV Club

“Obama surely has made mistakes, among them focusing so heavily on how reform would reduce the cost of medicine. Had he spent more time reminding voters that reform would provide them with the security they now lack–security from financial ruin and medical catastrophe, the type private insurance too rarely provides–he probably would have been better off.”
So writes Jonathan Cohn in a New Republic article called “Hindsight.”
In politics, it’s much easier to be a Monday morning quarterback than a prophet, of course. Cohn doesn’t blame Obama for focusing on costs. At the time, that approach made eminent sense. “[T[he evidence of unnecessary, even harmful medical care … has simply become overwhelming. And the argument that health care is a threat to our long-term fiscal health … has become impossible to ignore.” Theoretically we can spend as much as we want on health care, but that’s money that doesn’t get spent on roads, schools, public housing, and wages.

Selling health care on its financial merits made sense as a way to attract conservative Senators, who could threaten a filibuster. It should also have appealed to the electorate. “Americans still remain skeptical of government. … [P]articularly among political independents, government spending remains a proxy for waste. Making a big deal about how reform might curb health care spending–and, thus, ease the long-term burden on the federal budget–seemed like a perfectly plausible way to reach these voters.”

The trouble for Obama is that, in getting serious about cost, he gave critics lots of fat, juicy targets. Obama proposed to tie payments to quality; Betsy McCaughey said he would be giving doctors money for pulling the plug on grandma. Obama proposed to put a board of experts, using clinical evidence, to set Medicare payment rates; Sarah Palin interpreted that as creating a “death panel” that would declare the sick and disabled unworthy of treatment. The great irony is that by trying earnestly to craft a plan that could control costs, as well as expand coverage, Obama has provoked a political backlash that will make cost control harder in the future. He’s tried to tackle health care like a grown-up and, at the moment, he’s suffering for it politically.

Senator Kennedy’s death and health care reform

Universal health care was Senator Kennedy’s dream. He almost lived long enough to see it happen (assuming it does).
Before he died, pundits speculated on how his absence from the Senate floor would influence the outcome. Now they’re speculating on the impact of his death.
With Kennedy gone, and assuming a Democratic replacement is not imminent, the Republican Senators are in a position to filibuster a health care bill and prevent it from reaching the floor for a vote. The day before Kennedy died, Jason Zengerle speculated that Kennedy’s death would not affect the hearts and minds of these Senators.

I don’t see anything in Republican Senators’ current behavior that suggests that they’d respond in such a fashion [not filibustering]. After all, Kennedy’s current situation is plenty sympathy-inducing; and it’s not as if he’s been reluctant to link his personal health battle to his legislative battles for health reform. And yet, how have his colleagues across the aisle responded? By lamenting Kennedy’s absence but, at the same time, using it as a convenient excuse for their opposition to health reform: If only Teddy were around, they argue, he would surely be able to hammer out some sort of compromise the GOP could agree to. My guess is that, should Kennedy die in office, Republican Senators will continue with this more in sorrow than in anger opposition to health reform and use it to justify a filibuster.

Now that Kennedy has died, Noam Scheiber argues that the media coverage could affect public opinion.

The point isn’t that GOP senators will be so moved by Kennedy’s death that they’d be incapable of filibustering his cherished legislative initiative. It’s that, after a week or so of saturation coverage in the mainstream media–of Kennedy’s life, his funeral, his accomplishments, his surviving family members, his place in the Senate, the Kennedy family generally, the Kennedy legacy, the Kennedy place in American life, etc., etc.–almost all of it positive, the public will become more sympathetic to his dying wish and less tolerant of right-wing criticism. (That’s the big difference between before and after his passing.) That change in public opinion should, in turn, make Republican senators reluctant to undertake something as crass as a filibuster.

Related posts:
Edward Kennedy: Healthcare is a fundamental right, not a privilege