by Mark Silva
SCHENECTADY, N.Y. - On a high, scenic ridge that straddles the valleys of old coal country from Frackville to Wilkes-Barre and Scranton, Pa., the government has posted an oversized sign in the median strip of Interstate 81 where roadwork is under way: Federal "Recovery and Reinvestment" dollars at work.
And here in the old industrial city that built the steam turbines that turned the generators that made the electricity that generations of coal-burning Americans relied upon, the morning paper delivers a stark cartoon about the health-care debate.
"I'm afraid the health care plan is in trouble,'' the cartoon-characters advising President Barack Obama tell their boss. "How serious,'' Obama asks in the cartoon by Trever of the Abuquerque Journal. "We may have to come up with one,'' the advisers reply.
All signs lately point to the possibility that Americans are suffering from an overload of information:
It started with a recession that delivered a series of monthly reports about retirement accounts evaporating before the eyes of a generation that hoped to live well for a long time. Add the sagging value of the best investment that many Americans hold, their own homes. Add the jobs which millions have lost - some 15 million Americans without work now as unemployment nears 10 percent.
Many of the well-paying manufacturing jobs that sustained thriving middle- and working-class Americans in places such as the city that lighted the world here in Schenectady are long gone.
And then came a government spending spree that was supposed to help make it all better: A $700-billion bailout for financial giants, a multibillion-dollar bailout for ailing automakers, a $787-billion economic stimulus act offering limited tax relief and supporting "shovel-ready'' work such as the repavement of I-81 and now, if the president can win his way in Congress, a trillion-dollar health-care overhaul - with projected annual deficits amounting to nearly $10 trillion over the next decade.
President Barack Obama faces a singular challenge in the coming week and months: Selling a health-care plan that many tens of millions of Americans, indeed a majority, mistrust, if the polls are any guide. He will address a joint session of Congress next week with the hope of clarifying his agenda, reviving flagging support among members of his own party and capturing the attention of a minority party demanding a "reset'' of the debate.
But the question remains: The more Americans learn of the president's plans, what will they make of them?
(In the TV ad below, the Republican National Committee warns Americans that Democrats are threatening the health care of senior citizens. In the TV ad above, the Democratic National Committee warns that "Republicans are no friends of seniors.'' President Barack Obama's challenge next week involves a search for the truth.)
Joel Benenson, the president's pollster circulated a memo to congressional Democrats this week which asserts that, "By large margins, the American people support major reforms to the health care system.'' He cites a CBS News poll showing that 82 percent of Americans say the health care system needs either fundamental changes (55 percent) or needs "to be rebuilt" (27 percent).
But only 31 percent say they "understand the health care reforms under consideration in Congress, while 67 percent say they find them confusing, this survey released Aug. 31 shows.
"When voters learn about the composition of the plan, support grows considerably,'' Berenson wrote, citing an NBC News poll which found that initially, only 36 percent said that the president's health care plan is "a good idea" while 42 percent called it a bad idea. However, 53 percent said they favored the plan after hearing a short description including requirements on insurance companies to cover people with preexisting
conditions, requiring all but the smallest employers to provide health coverage or pay a percentage of their payroll to help fund coverage for the uninsured and offering tax credits to help families and individuals to help them afford coverage.''
"As we enter this final stage of the health insurance reform debate, there is a significant opportunity to clearly define health insurance reform, replacing Republican misrepresentations with facts,'' Berenson wrote. "Voters still see a strong need for reform.''
Yet the Republicans are eager to point to another possibility: That the more Americans know about the president's plans, the less they will buy them. And the GOP has been investing its own money in ads warning that senior citizens, in particular, have a lot to worry about in the cuts in Medicare spending that the White House envisions as part of the means for paying for the plans. The White House maintains that no benefits will be cut in the bargain.
Most Americans favor "the abstract concept of remaking the medical system,'' according to the co-author of an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, who also suggests that details may favor the bedeviling critics of the president's plan.
"President Obama needs to convince Americans that the country, at a minimum, would be better off and that most families would not be worse off," Robert Blendon, a professor of health policy and political analysis at the Harvard School of Public Health and the John F. Kennedy School of Government, tells the Prescriptions health-care reform blog at the New York Times.
(The medical journal notes that Dr. Blendon reports also serves on the board of directors of and holds stock in Assurant, and he and co-author John Benson are receiving grant support from the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation. )
Blendon sees parallels to the 1940s and the 1990s, when President Harry Truman and later President Bill Clinton proposed health care "make-overs.' But, he contends, Americans initially favored the idea of revamping the medical system but grew disillusioned as the details of the presidents' policies became explicit and opposition to the plans took hold.
"The basic outline is not different in that, early on, people were dissatisfied with the system and called for change, but they distrusted the government and public support fell substantially as the debate wore on," Blendon tells the Times' Prescription blogger. "It could work out the same way here."
Comments
Americans Can't Trust Republicans With Medicare
You want a simple message to counter dishonest Republican fear mongering on healthcare? How's this, Republicans want to do away with Medicare. They've always wanted to take it away, and if they get half a chance in the future they'll get rid of it then. It's not hard to find examples of them saying so in their own words since Medicare started.
Saint Ronny Raygun in the 60s: "if you don’t [stop Medicare] ... you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free."
Republican Bob Dole openly bragged in 1996 that he was one of 12 House members who voted against creating Medicare. "I was there, fighting the fight, voting against Medicare ..."
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http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2009/07/29/medicare-44/
GOPer nutjob/ "guru" Newt Gingrich said of Medicare, "We don't get rid of it in round one because we don't think that's politically smart, we don't think that's the right way to go through a transition, but we believe it's going to wither on the vine." He then went on to propose cutting Medicare by 14% and forcing millions of senior citizens to seek out private HMOs or go without, all to help make sure Medicare would 'wither on the vine.' And it continues right into present day.
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http://www.nytimes.com/1995/09/16/us/gop-s-plan-to-cut-medicare-faces-a-veto-clinton-promises.html?sec=health&spon=&pagewanted=all
Roy Blunt: "You could certainly argue that government should have never have gotten in the health care business, and that might have been the best argument of all, to figure out how people could have had more access to a competitive marketplace."
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http://www.firedupmissouri.com/content/radical-roy-blunt-it-would-have-been-best-if-medicare-and-medicaid-never-existed
Former Republican House Majority Leader the Dick Armey reaffirmed this week on MtP that he thinks Medicare is "tryanny" and if that's not worrisome enough, he wants to "phase out" social security too.
Republicans want to do away with Medicare because they're against government healthcare, always have been, always will be. That's a core plank in GOP ideology, they hold it as dear and precious as some holy theology. Just yesterday, when asked about government healthcare, Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa said the "government is a predator, not a competitor" and went on to note he wouldn't vote for any healthcare reform bill as a matter of conservative principle, even if it has everything he wants in it. So when a Republican talks about "reform," says we must "get the government out of healthcare," pitches convoluted tax schemes and private accounts for the affluent, or spits out terms like "socialized medicine," like a dog whistle they all mean the same thing: getting rid of Medicare.
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http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/2009/08/sen-grassley-on-health-care-the-government-is-a-predator.php?ref=fpblg
Forget about grandma being unplugged, grandma won't be able to afford being seen, much less be able to pay for hospital admission. Grandma is on her own. All so that conservative zillionaires and their Republican congressional lackeys can save an extra 0.0145 of their gross, bloated paycheck, the same flat rate we all invest to keep millions of senior citizens alive and healthy today.
Posted by: Darksyde | September 5, 2009 3:00 PM
The "truth" from Obama would be a welcome change. In previous talks, he obviously did not know the details of the Congressional bills and said they included features they did not. He also said they excluded features they did not, such as rationing of health care. For once, he should shed the TelePrompters and speak directly to the American people...and look us in the eye instead of to the side.
Posted by: Taft | September 5, 2009 5:08 PM
Taft, I don't think the truth is something Obama is capable of telling. He is a Chicago Democrat, after all.
Mark, without you even knowing it, I think you pinpointed part of the reason why many Americans are against this: $10 trillion in deficits in the next 10 years. Health care alone, will up the deficit at least $1 trillion the next 10 years and probably even more. How can this country afford DOUBLING the national debt in less than 10 years? How can the feds handle health care when Medicare is going to be in deficit in just six years from now? How can the feds handle one-sixth of the economy when most car dealers STILL HAVEN'T been paid yet for the cash for clunkers? This, WEEKS after the program ended?
Posted by: John D | September 5, 2009 5:57 PM
"Darksyde": Well, I am just curious what your take is on the initial estimate of Medicare costing $9 billion in 1990 while the actual cost was $67 billion?
And, what do you think of the estimates that Medicare has an unfunded liability of $37 trillion dollars?
Do you think government has managed the Medicare program so well and done such a great job at cost estimating they deserve to manage the rest of our system too?
Rick
Posted by: Rick Caird | September 5, 2009 7:00 PM
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Do you think government has managed the Medicare program so well and done such a great job at cost estimating they deserve to manage the rest of our system too?
Posted by: Rick Caird | September 5, 2009 7:00 PM
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Lil' Ricky,
The problem isn't gov't running health care, the problem is when gov't hating Republicans are put in charge of running the gov't. They do everything they can to cut funding to all gov't programs and then they strut around talking about inept gov't is...and it is, under their "leadership.
Republicans want things to stay the way they are because every single one of them are nothing more than corporate prostitutes to the Big Health Insurance Lobby, (among others) and the Big Health Insurance Co's want things to stay the way they are because they don't want to lose their cash cow scam of taking money from people and then dropping them when they can no longer make money off them...like when they get sick, or old, or both.
Posted by: Mick Hendrix | September 6, 2009 12:13 AM
I remember back in the good old days when we lived down the street from a field..and we were free to run through that field whenever we wanted chasing butterflies and playing pick-up baseball games...
Listen up folks, it is NOT 1960 any more and the things we face today are far more complicated no matter how we got here from the idyllic Camelot 60's. That field is paved over "with little pink houses". We need to have healthcare reform NOW. When a person most needs healthcare, when you are sick, you should not face losing your home because treatments for illness are so expensive. And you should be able to get insurance in the first place. Try it sometime and you will agree we need change now.
Posted by: lochnesssmonster | September 6, 2009 7:40 AM
Taft,
Obama doesn't need any advice on how to deliver an address.
People wishing to inform themselves on the issues relating to health care need look no further than the series going on right now on CSpan.
Right now, for example, the British system is being explained by the British Ambassador for Health & Life Sciences.
Later today TR Reed will discuss his book on comparative systems.
Brian Lamb appears in a number of the programs in this series, and I've a notion he's the moving force.
Way to go, Brian!
Posted by: ornery | September 6, 2009 8:04 AM
Obam's Obamacare lies should be interesting Tuesday.
Posted by: Inky | September 6, 2009 9:38 AM
Lil' Mickey,
The problem isn't who is running the gov't program, its the design of the program itself. If the GOP was cutting funding to Medicare, it wouldn't be in as bad of financial condition as it is.
There isn't one gov't run program that has satisfied the customer and stayed below its original cost estimate. Not a single one!!!
Posted by: Terry | September 6, 2009 9:43 AM
[quote]
How can this country afford DOUBLING the national debt in less than 10 years?
[/quote]
Posted by: John D | September 5, 2009 5:57 PM
Geographically Stupid Little Johnnie D: the national debt DOUBLED under President Bush in EIGHT years. So please tell us - how can the country afford THAT?
Posted by: BC | September 6, 2009 11:48 AM
"ornery", you mentioned the program on C-span about, comparing healthcare systems. Which of the C-Span channels would that be?
Thanks.
SUPPORT OUR TROOPS, BRING THEM HOME, ALIVE AND WHOLE. NOW.
Posted by: Don Fitzgerald, IL | September 6, 2009 12:00 PM
There are strong indications that if anyone wants to know the Obama model for health care, government control of business, the future of free speech in radio-TV, and the conduct of elections, they need only look to Obama's friend in Venezuela. Remember, the one who gave him the book...and is now closing all of the "unfriendly" radio stations.
Posted by: Wilson | September 6, 2009 7:14 PM
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Posted by: Darksyde | September 5, 2009 3:00 PM
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And we can’t trust Democrats to come up with a social welfare program that isn’t designed to self-destruct.
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And we can’t trust Darksyde to stop with the cut and paste job from the DailyKos.
Posted by: John W. | September 6, 2009 7:55 PM
Under President Bush they raised the debt limit five times, because of the tax cuts to the wealthy. That is why the republicans have more dollars than sense. They don't seem to understand that the greed in the health care industry, from insurance, doctors, medical labs, and the pharmaceuticals, are destroying the economy of this nation. In the near future if nothing is done, the tax payer will be making house payments and health care payments, there won't be anything left over. The citizen's of this country need a public option now, and preferably, a single payer so we can rid the system of the racketeers that are running our health care industry. whiteagle38
Posted by: Raymond Juneau | September 6, 2009 8:29 PM
"Mick Hendrix": You say: "the problem is when gov't hating Republicans are put in charge of running the gov't"
That's your argument??? If you really believe that, then you could never be in favor of the government taking over health care. No matter how much you object, eventually the Republicans will be in charge of the government again. In fact, it may be sooner than you think. Maybe, when that happens we can lobby for a "Mick Hendrix" death panel and make all your dreams and predictions come true. Are you planning to flee the country if you get sick and the Republicans are in charge?
Rick
Posted by: Rick Caird | September 7, 2009 9:19 AM
"BC": Perhaps we ought to explain to you the concept of exponential growth and the concept of doubling every few years. Here is a test for you. Find a chess/checker board and put one penny on the first square, 2 on he second, then 4 on the next. Keep doubling every adjacent square and let us know how it works out for you.
Rick
Posted by: Rick Caird | September 7, 2009 9:23 AM