Say Anything Blog

And if they don’t pass it this year, they probably won’t have another chance until 2011 given that few of the Democrats who are on the fence about government health care will be likely to want to make politically-risky moves on the issue during the 2010 election year.

Health care reform proponents are growing pessimistic that they can meet President Barack Obama’s August target for passing a bill — saying the next four weeks must fall together perfectly, without a hitch or a hiccup.

The number of weeks that’s happened recently? Zero.

A series of setbacks has made the task of completing floor votes in both chambers virtually insurmountable, given the plodding pace of the Senate. The official line from the White House and the congressional leadership is it’s possible, but privately, there are a dwindling number of aides who would put money on it.

And without a deal by August, the ripple effects could start to endanger the prospect of health care reform this year altogether — chief among them, the closer it gets to the 2010 midterm elections, the harder it will be to get members to make the toughpolitical decisions needed to vote on a bill.

Obama has said he wants something he can sign by October, but every delay at this point lowers the odds of meeting that goal.

The biggest problem Democrats are facing right now is the gigantic cost of the bill.  Had the liberals not rushed to use the economic downturn as leverage to pass a gigantic “stimulus” spending bill the public in general might be a little less debt and deficit weary right now and more open to massive new spending on government health care.

But the problem, as critics of government health care such as myself have been saying all along, is that the Democrats need to find a way to sell government health care to the public without the public noticing the price tag.  To date they’ve floated suggestions such as taxing tobacco even more, and instituting new taxes on things like soda and fast food.  Rep. Charles Rangel has even suggested the old tried-and-true “tax the rich” approach, but none of it seems to be working for them.  They have not yet found the right way to package government health care so that Americans are convinced they’ll get the same level of health care they’re getting now for free.

And that’s not surprising, given that the reality is government health care would mean lowering the quality of care while simultaneously raising our taxes so that we end up paying more for it.