Friday, November 06, 2009

Bold but Desperate   [Grace-Marie Turner]

Speaker Pelosi and President Obama are as bold as they are desperate in forcing the House to vote this weekend on their massive health-reform plan.

The president is expected to give a full endorsement of the House bill, despite the fact that it clearly violates major campaign promises he has made to the American people on reducing health costs, not adding to the deficit, no middle-class taxes, no loss of current coverage, and many other pledges. The president is expected to go to Capitol Hill on Saturday to personally plead with members to support his signature issue, despite their knowing he's asking many of them to walk the plank and end their political careers if they vote yes.

The overwhelming thrashing that Democrats took in Virginia and the defeat of an incumbent Democratic governor in New Jersey were loud warning shots from the voters. And it’s hard to see how Democrats can ignore the tens of thousands of people who gathered outside the Capitol yesterday to oppose a massive government takeover of our health sector.

The Speaker knows that if she doesn’t get members to vote before they go home for next week’s Veterans Day recess, she may never get the 218 votes she needs to pass her bill. 

But opposition grows by the hour.  The White House is touting a few high-profile endorsements, including the American Medical Association and the AARP.  But both organizations are facing rebellions in their ranks for their endorsements. 

And both are highly suspect: Forget everything else in the bill that would harm doctors and patients.  The AMA seems to believe that the Speaker is to be trusted when she promises them that the $220 billion “Doc Fix,” which she cut from the health reform bill, really-truly-trust-us still will be passed. A number of state medical societies are circulating a resolution repudiating the AMA’s endorsement, and 20 physician specialty groups yesterday issued statements warning of dire consequences for patients if the House bill passes. Watch for fireworks at the AMA meeting in Houston this weekend.

And the AARP clearly has self-interested motives in purporting to represent 40 million seniors while supporting a bill that would cut Medicare by $500 billion, as I wrote in a piece picked up in the Chicago Tribune and elsewhere yesterday. 

Meanwhile, the list of organizations that oppose the measure grows by the hour:  The National Federation of Independent Business, the National Association of Manufacturers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Retail Federation, the National Association of Health Underwriters, the Mayo Clinic, plus many more associations inside and outside the health industry all have sent or signed letters to Congress opposing passage of the bill.

Moderate Democrats hold the key. Either they will listen to the voters, or they will listen to the Speaker. If they do the latter, they surely will be hearing from the former in next year’s elections.

11/06 09:00 AMShare