Anyway I was just about to post the following at Washington Monthly when I realized I had nothing up here today. It is not quite in a finished format, in part because I knew it was just ephemeral, but it allows me to check out my new iPad as an editor (I am writing this from home).
Well I left a comment when this just showed up at the WaPo making the point some have made here, lots of good things happen at the front end.To be continued and polished.
But the biggest problem for Republicans is that the single weakest point of the bill, the one being attacked by the Republican AGs from the Right and the Firepups and others from the Left, the piece that would be the very LAST to be taken out of a repeal bill is the only piece that makes it work for the R's corporate masters. I speak of course of the individual mandate.
You already hear R rumblings about keeping this little piece and that little piece and inevitably those are the ones with the biggest negative impact on AHIP member profits.
It is the same dynamic that has Republicans trapped on their call to repeal the Stimulus Bill, because that is immediately going to draw calls for "excepts". Well except for that extra funding for cops, except for that extra funding for rural projects, well and God knows we NEED that water project, in the end they are likely to except themselves to death. Because in the end Congressmen LUV waving those oversize cardboard checks around, and nobody is going to be happy knowing he just voted to cut the money that was going to fund the upgrade of the sewer plant or build that new school.
There probably is not a single suburb or small town or rural area that is not familiar with the 'Little Suzy from Down the Street is going to Die without an Operation" Donation jar on the cashier's counter at the local market, complete with a smiling picture of Little Suzy before she got sick and maybe after. Because Dad got laid off or the family hit their lifetime limit or whatever. Democrats can go right to the people and tell them they don't need to be holding bake sales for cancer patients, instead they can go back to using them to raise money for softball teams or playgrounds.
Is it playing rough to use poster children? Well I don't see why, just about every disease awareness campaign in history has personalized, think of 'Jerry's Kids'. Republicans are trying hard to make this all about taking your dollars away to give to undeserving Others, but in the case of health care that Other includes people you know, after all we are talking about 1 out of every 6 people in the country and by and large not counting poor people.
Now this may not be true for people living in a senior community or you may be so young and dumb that you think you will never need to see a doctor or 'they have to treat you' (they don't, not for everything, ask Little Suzy). But in most places around this country 1 in 5 or 6 of the people shopping in that supermarket has to think twice or three times before going to a doctor, buy groceries or check out that cough. Which is probably just sinuses and not H1N1, is it worth $160 to find out?
