TO THE CONTRARY...:

A floundering campaign on health care (Michael Kranish, August 21, 2009, Boston Globe)

President Obama’s campaign for the White House was widely hailed for its ability to stick to a script. But as prospects for the passage of health care reform become murkier, and a backlash among liberal Democrats becomes louder, even some of Obama’s strongest supporters are suggesting that his discipline has slipped.

In recent weeks, Obama has delivered mixed messages that have bogged down the debate and sapped momentum from his top domestic priority.

He distracted attention during his own prime-time press conference last month on health care when he stated that Cambridge police acted “stupidly’’ when they arrested Henry Louis Gates Jr., which dominated the news for a week. He took several days to directly rebut charges that the health plan included “death panels’’ that would determine end-of-life care. This week, he and his top aides appeared to waver on the importance of creating a government-run plan to compete with private insurers.

...the UR and the Democrats have been on message, it's just that the message is itself so contradictory and unpopular, at least in significant parts, that to enunciate it clearly is to drive away support. Forget all of the particulars and consider only the generalities of what is being promised:

(1) A massive expansion in the number of people covered by some form of health insurance. Some taxpayers have to pay for that.

(2) Establishing some government control over what is being spent now. Someone is going to be denied care that they currently would receive.

(3) Womb-to-grave coverage. Which means the government will be more involved in and spending money on the most controversial procedures in our society: abortion and euthanasia.

And all of this proceeds from the Left's fundamental belief that the State is insufficiently involved in the provision of health care to the citizenry, although a vanishingly small percentage of Americans believe that government involvement will render either medical or economic efficiencies to the system.

All of the discipline in thew world can not save the President from killing the momentum for his proposed policies ever time he speaks of them. If anything, the big mistake the White House has made is letting him speak at all.

MORE:
A Basis Is Seen for Some Health Plan Fears Among the Elderly (ROBERT PEAR, 8/21/09, NY Times)

President Obama has sold health care legislation to Congress and the country as a way to slow the growth of federal health spending, no less than as a way to regulate the insurance market and cover the uninsured.

Mr. Obama has also said Medicare and private insurers could improve care and save money by following advice from a new federal panel of medical experts on “what treatments work best.”

The zeal for cutting health costs, combined with proposals to compare the effectiveness of various treatments and to counsel seniors on end-of-life care, may explain why some people think the legislation is about rationing, which could affect access to the most expensive services in the final months of life.

You mean opposition can be rational, not just evil or stupid?

When Planners Decide Life (Michael Gerson, August 21, 2009, Washington Post)

It is increasingly clear, however, that Democratic health reforms would disrupt this rough equilibrium.

Take abortion. The House approach to the coverage of the procedure in federally subsidized insurance plans is presented as a compromise: Abortions would be funded out of the premiums that come from individuals, not money from taxpayers. But this is a cover, if not a con. By the nature of health insurance, premiums are not devoted to specific procedures; they support insurance plans. It matters nothing in practice if a premium dollar comes from government or the individual -- both enable the same coverage. If the federal government directly funds an insurance plan that includes elective abortion, it cannot claim it is not paying for elective abortions.

In fact, any national approach to this issue is likely to challenge the current social consensus on abortion. The House bill would result in federal funding for abortion on an unprecedented scale. But forbidding federal funds to private insurers that currently cover elective abortions (as some insurers do) would amount, as pro-choice advocates note, to a restriction on the availability of abortion. Either way, government will send a powerful, controversial social signal.

The same is likely to be true of end-of-life issues. Talk of "death panels" is the parody of the debate -- hyperbolic and self-defeating. But a discussion about the prospect of rationing in a public health system is not only permissible but unavoidable. Every nation that has promised comprehensive, low-cost health coverage for all citizens has faced a similar dilemma. Eventually it is not enough to increase public spending or to reduce waste. More direct forms of cost control become an overwhelming priority. And because health expenditures are weighted toward the end of life, the rationing of health care often concerns older people most directly.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 21, 2009 7:23 AM