"...When CBS asked Americans in April 2001, “Do you favor or oppose George W. Bush's $1.6 trillion tax cut for the country over the next 10 years?" supporters outnumbered opponents by a 51 percent to 37 percent margin. In June 2003, a Gallup poll found Americans supported the second round of cuts by a 47 percent to 43 percent plurality, while Harris found that 50 percent thought the tax cut was a “good thing” compared to 35 percent who said “bad thing.”
Yet polls show a majority of Americans oppose the health care bill and a CNN poll released last week found that just 25 percent of Americans want Congress to pass something similar to the two existing bills. A Gallup survey taken last week found that Americans oppose using the reconciliation procedure to pass a health care bill by a 52 percent to 39 percent margin. There has been a sustained national outcry against this legislation that first manifested itself in town hall meetings last August and culminated with the election of Sen. Scott Brown in Massachusetts in January.
Yet Obama, whose entire candidacy was built around the idea that change must begin from the bottom up, is now pursuing a top down strategy.
“It is a complicated issue,” Obama said of health care on Wednesday, continuing, “it easily lends itself to demagoguery and political gamesmanship, and misrepresentation and misunderstanding.” And he observed that “The American people want to know if it's still possible for Washington to look out for their interests and their future.”
Evidently, according to Obama, Americans only oppose his favored proposals because they aren’t smart enough to understand them, and are incapable of looking out for their own interests and future."
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The Rasmussen polls, which predicted Barack Obama's 2008 presidential win, show a strong majority of likely voters oppose the proposed health care plan - 52% oppose it, and 43% strongly oppose it - almost as many as the 44% of likely voters who favor the plan.
Why don't I like this plan? To quote Cecil Day-Lewis, I'm defending the bad against the worse.
Based on my experience working with Louisiana's state-owned health care system, I can say that the opportunities for rampant corruption are vast in any governmentally-controlled health care system, where politics, bribery, favoritism and not bottom-line cost-benefit analysis drive every fiscal decision.
And the Party of the late John Murtha will be making every one of those decisions. The earmarks on any health care appropriation bill (which I freely admit are a bipartisan issue) alone would probably dwarf the cost of the Golden Parachutes under which health-care executives bail out of their careers.
Any claims that government control of the entire health care economy will result in efficiencies are farcical, based on Louisiana's experience. It took Bobby Jindal to sort that rat's nest out, and I haven't heard Barack Obama reaching out for Bobby Jindal to run the national health care system. We're not likely to, either.
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