Politics, Polling and Promises of Health Care Reform

So far, health care reform continues to plague Congressional leaders and appears to be creating an electoral backlash for aspirant Democrats. Let's look at a couple of recent analyses.

In this morning's Wall Street Journal, John Fund blames national issues, especially health care, for leading to Democratic losses in special elections in Oklahoma and Tennessee.

Also in the WSJ, Peggy Noonan thinks she knows why Americans have soured on further expansion of government's reach: We know how it turns out. While the New Deal and Great Society represented new ventures, "virgin territory," things are different today.

Now the national terrain is thick with federal programs, and with state, county, city and town entities and programs, from coast to coast. It's not virgin territory anymore, it's crowded. We are a nation fully settled by government. We are well into the age of the welfare state, the age of government. We know its weight, heft and demands, know its costs both in terms of money and autonomy, even as we know it has made many of our lives more secure, and helped many to feel encouragement.

But we know the price now.

And it's one we're reluctant to pay. even if polling shows we don't know the details. (Then again, neither do a lot of the folks voting on the legislation.)

For example, as the Washington State Labor Council reports, labor unions have absolutely no interest in seeing new taxes on their health plans, as required under the Baucus bill.

These union-negotiated benefits are not "Cadillac Plans" offering excessive benefits. The benefits in these plans are roughly comparable to other plans, but provide for more limited cost-sharing.

That's a pretty big difference. Here's their justification.

Many union members have chosen to forego wage increases at the bargaining table in order to preserve their health care plans over the years. Now, the Senate is considering punishing these working-class families for that choice by targeting them with a new excise tax in order to avoid taxing wealthy families that can really afford it. That's why this new health-care excise tax is a deal-breaker for organized labor.

The "tax the rich" meme never grows old for some folks.

Centrist Democrat Al From has some good advice for Congressional leaders: Forget about the public option, concentrate on cost control, and deliver a bipartisan solution. I like his summary.

I'd personally like to see health-care reform include fees (as the president proposed) on Cadillac health-care plans, incentives to replace fee-for-service payments with more cost-effective models (the best way to bring down health-care costs over the long haul), and measures to limit abuses in malpractice suits (which Republicans have long called for).

Very sensible. Maybe when they tire of threatening insurance companies, they'll get around to it.