Why did health care reform fail? Lack of empathy

Continuing with Abigail Trafford’s analysis of health care reform, the next comparison between the Obama and Clinton failures is the ongoing empathy gap.
Trafford describes an experience she had with supporters of Clinton’s health reform. In 1994 she traveled with the Health Security Express, a busload of individuals who suffered from a variety of illnesses and who were willing to trek around the country making a case for universal health care.

The riders became a target for attacks against the Clintons. At each stop, small but vocal crowds were organized to protest “BillaryCare” and “socialized medicine.” One protester yelled at a woman in a wheelchair: “Go back to Russia!” I was stunned by the vitriol and nastiness of protesters.

In the nineties, these incidents occurred far from Washington and received little news coverage. Today the antics of the Tea Party have made them the darling of both ends of the media spectrum, where they can either be admired or reviled. The result: “[N]oisy rhetoric — on both sides — has widened the empathy gap, diminishing the chances of reconciliation.”
Trafford claims that Obama has not put a human face on the suffering of specific individuals. This seems inaccurate. At almost every public opportunity where he addresses health care, Obama cites moving stories from letters he’s received and from personal encounters with individuals across the country who have told him their stories. If he arranged for dying individuals to appear on stage, he’d receive no end of flak for exploitation.

New media, the middle class, and blaming a woman

A few more explanations and comparisons:
In Clinton’s time, health care itself was undergoing radical changes due to managed care. In Obama’s time, what’s rapidly changing is the way people get information.

Partisan television channels, radio talk shows, free-for-all debate on the Internet, blogs galore, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter now dominate communication and shape what people think and feel. In different ways, both initiatives failed to take into account these social revolutions and were overtaken by them.

In the early ’90s, it was insured individuals and the large corporations that insured their employees that opposed reform. This time around, reform is supported by the wealthy and the poor. It’s the middle class who feel it’s not in their interest.

Massachusetts polls showed that the defeated Democratic Senate candidate overwhelmingly carried the bottom third of the population as well as upper-income voters. She lost those of middle income.

In the ’90s, the media blamed Hillary Clinton for the failure of reform. (The plan was not in fact Hillary’s. See Economic recovery and healthcare reform.) We could blame Massachusetts’ Martha Coakley for losing the filibuster-proof 60 votes in the Senate. But that’s too simple.

The general idea of reform is great on the campaign trail, but the details of a plan can be fatal. Cumbersome, controversial, confusing bills seem to get dashed by the cumbersome, controversial, confusing political process.

And then there’s the politics

A major factor in the failure of health reform, not included in Trafford’s account, is a political climate that makes Congressional re-election the highest priority. As South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint said last summer, “If we’re able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.”
Senator DeMint may well get his wish. But the ugliness of political in-fighting just might sufficiently disgust voters that they’ll throw out the incumbents come November. Wouldn’t it be nice if members of Congress valued win-win situations more than winning at the expense of their opponents? Or at least, to borrow from Abba — not the first to note that “the history book on the shelf is always repeating itself” — how about a situation where either side can feel like they win even when they lose?

Sources:

(Links will open in a separate window or tab.)

Abigail Trafford, Obama’s struggle with health-care reform echoes Clintons’ failure in 1994, The Washington Post, February 2, 2010
Abigail Trafford, What Went Wrong: How Wonks and Pols — and You — Fumbled Universal Health Care, The Washington Post, August 21, 1994
Ben Smith, Health reform foes plan Obama’s ‘Waterloo’, Politco, July 17, 2009