Health Care Reform Debates Turn Nasty

The rancor surrounding Congressional deliberations (if we can use the term loosely) over some kind of national health care policy change has exceeded even my often jaded expectations. For Democratic leaders, the desire to win ... win something ... has led to heated denunciations of insurance carriers. For conservative opponents, the chance to defeat "Obamacare" has turned town meetings into shouting matches.

As a rule, major policy change requires something approaching consensus. Short of bipartisan support, the victories evanesce, often quickly. We saw that in Washington last decade, when sweeping one-party health care policy changes adopted in 1993 largely disappeared after partisan control of the legislature changed in 1994.

A similar dynamic appears likely to undercut the current efforts, although little is certain.

Consider.

The New York Times reports this morning on the way the debate is playing out across the country. The paper flags House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's strategy. 

On Friday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, promised a “drumbeat across America” to counter what she termed a “shock and awe, carpet-bombing by the health insurance industry to perpetuate the status quo.”

Here's how Roll Call quotes Pelosi.

“They are the villains in this,” Pelosi said Thursday of the insurance companies.

On the blog of the Washington Federation of State Employees, Dennis Eagle, in a post headlined "health care terrorists," surveys the opposition and concludes:

...our voices are being drowned out by a handful of well-heeled interests and some noisy extremists.

We've got to step up our game.

The problem with the strategy is that public opinion is against them. And it's not just a handful of well-heeled interests or down-at-the-heels extremists. It's folks who've taken a careful look at how they might fare under the proposed reform and concluded it's a bad deal for them.

As usual, Michael Barone sums it up nicely. Read the blog post and follow up with the column. It comes down to choice and how easily people can effect change. Markets work swiftly; politics ... well, that's different.

Peter Wehner has another take on it in Commentary, where he offers a nice take-down of the notion that the administration's only problem is that it hasn't communicated enough. 

...the problem with Obama’s effort isn’t a failure to communicate; it is his inability to refute health-care facts and figures that, as they become more salient, are undermining his effort. The most important facts are related to health-care costs.

It's not the messenger. It's that the message doesn't work and people know that.

Quick confirmation for Wehner's point from the seattlepi.com, which reports that a new Rasmussen poll shows most Americans oppose tax increases to pay for universal coverage. 

Regardless of the weather for the rest of the month, the August recess will be hot at the health care forums.