We all remember the disaster that was “Hillarycare”. When Bill Clinton became president, one of the first things he did was establish the Task Force on National Health Care Reform, and made his wife, then First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, the chair. The Clinton health care plan would have been a dangerously close step to universal health care, and is eerily similar to Obama’s government run health care reform plan. It was a massive failure and continues to haunt the Clintons, and Hillary in particular. It was a bureaucrat’s dream and a conservative’s nightmare, and also would have greatly restricted patient choice. Americans were as ardently against Hillarycare then as they are against Obamacare now. Of course, shortly after Hillarycare died, it had introduced Democrats and the Clintons as the big-government liberals that they were. Hillarycare was undoubtedly a driving force in the Republican revolution of 1994.
With all that said, it may seem hard to understand just why the Obamas seem to willing to ignore history and repeat the Clintons’ mistake. But so far, the Democratic push towards socialized health care has been an epic failure. Americans are just as ardently against it as they were in the beginning. And the new plan, to smear everyone who disagrees with Obamacare as racist, has backfired as well. So, the new plan is to try to bring out Michelle Obama, and see if the most over-hyped First Lady in history can try to sell it better, even though it was a disastrous move for the Clintons.
The Obamas are taking a different approach to using Michelle Obama as their new secret weapon, however: the soccer mom sell. She apparently won’t be wasting her time with specifics on policy or details of the reform. No, Michelle’s message is going straight to the women, who she’s hoping will be easily influenced by rhetoric as empty as the “HOPE!” and “CHANGE!” mantras the Obamas used to take to victory last November. She’s just going to be telling moms that they need to make sure that their kids eat healthy, get lots of exercise, and plenty of preventative care. Moms, I guess, don’t already know this. And of course, universal health care just goes hand-in-hand with common sense child-rearing.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like this will help much. The newest poll numbers are as fatal as ever.
Rasmussen is reporting that opposition to Obamacare is at an all-time high, at 56%. Only 43% favor the plan, and that includes the measly 24% who strongly favor it. The percentage of Americans who think the reform bill is likely to get passed has been steadily dropping as well. The public perception of protestors against health care reform, however, has improved. Rasmussen also found that only 22% of Americans believe that Congress even has a good understanding of the legislation.
But perhaps the most distressing news of all for the Obamas is that polling for the uninsured is not overwhelmingly for the health care reform, either. 35% of uninsured voters are against it; 31% of uninsured voters believe that if the legislation passes, the quality of health care will get worse; and 41% of uninsured voters believe that passage will lead to higher health care costs. Many uninsured voters do support Obama’s health care plan, but they don’t have a strong lead at all. And this should be distressing to Obama and the Democrats because this is supposedly one of the reasons that we “must” have health care reform, so that the uninsured can get health care. But a very good number of uninsured voters don’t want Obama’s health care. Many uninsured voters are simply young (below thirty) and have chosen to not pay for insurance. They see this as a chosen, temporary status and they don’t want health care forced on them, which is exactly what Obama’s government-run health care plan will do.
So can Michelle Obama save Obamacare from the dismal poll numbers? It doesn’t look like it, especially if the country catches wind of the patient-dumping scheme Michelle Obama took part in as an executive at the University of Chicago Medical Center. It provides charity care -- less than 1.5% of their total expenses on charity care, to be exact -- and Michelle Obama helped to engineer a plan that dumped low-income patients on other facilities, opening up space for more lucrative patients -- patients that had health insurance. Michelle Obama may not be the best person to put front-and-center on the stage of the health care debate, especially considering that, no matter how many doom-and-gloom scenarios they paint for us, the fact remains that the majority of Americans are happy with the health care they have.
Will the Obamas listen and respect that?
Cassy Fiano's Bio
Cassy Fiano is a sports journalist turned political blogger ( www.cassyfiano.com ). She's a twenty-something opinionated conservative who has worked on a presidential campaign, campaigned for George W. Bush in 2004, and served on the planning committee for the Jacksonville Tax Day Tea Party.
Posted
09-22-2009 12:01 AM
Link to this post: