Two Newspaper articles explain the headline of this diary. First is the article about the key vote on pharmaceutical re-importation in today's L.A. Times: Senate healthcare bill advances with rejection of imported drugs
The defeat of the drug importation proposal from a bipartisan group of lawmakers, which would have made it easier to import cheaper prescription drugs from Canada and Western Europe, was a crucial victory for Obama and the pharmaceutical industry.
The politically charged amendment had held up the Senate for a week and threatened to derail the whole healthcare bill.
I'll repeat:
Obama and the pharmaceutical industry.
It's not Obama against the powerful industry that charges Americans about three times more than other equally wealthy countries, but Obama and Pharmaceutical industry--a team working together.
Now let's see how the N.Y. Times covered this key re importation vote, the vote that cleared the way for the end stage of the push to pass the Senate Bill, that will lead to signing of this into law.
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The above is the index for Wednesday December 16, the day after the vote. You can look for the article about the Democrats refusing to pass a bill that would have lowered the cost of prescription drugs, but you won't find it. The New York Times, the paper of record, chose not to run a story about this as of the early on line edition. And there are those who still believe that if it doesn't appear in the Times, it's really too trivial to think about.
The Washington Post did have run an article on the days HCR events, Obama urges Senate to pass health-care bill; Lieberman signals support with a couple sentences about the reimportation bill:
The Senate also defeated a proposal by Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.) to allow Americans to import low-cost prescription drugs, a provision that could have upended a deal Obama made with drugmakers this year to support the health-care overhaul.
So, with the 60 votes secured it looks like we will have a democratic health care bill signed in a few weeks.
Now to the key article, that tells me that this will be a costly mistake for the Democratic Party in the next election. A disaster, if not outright suicide. It's this article on the latest The Washington Post/ABC News Poll
But Obama and the Democrats have had decidedly less success convincing the public that their health proposals will bring positive change. More than half of those polled, 53 percent, see higher costs for themselves if the proposed changes go into effect than if the current system remains intact.
Actually, these people are right. The CBO is mandated to accept the premises that congress gives them, so they comply. In contrast, the Actuary of Medicare is mandated to make a professional prediction of the effects of this law on Medicare beneficiaries along with others. The people who take this poll also look at what is reasonable, and know that the effects will be higher prices,
About as many (55 percent) say the overall cost of the national health-care system would go up more sharply. Moreover, just 37 percent say the quality of their care would be better under a new system; 50 percent see it as better under the current set-up.
I have to say the following surprised me, as I thought that at least this group who the entire bill is predicated on helping would support it overwhelmingly
Even among those who presumably stand to benefit most from a major restructuring of the insurance market -- the nearly one in 5 adults without coverage -- there are doubts about the changes under consideration. Those without insurance are evenly divided on the question of whether their care would be better if the system were overhauled.
What was not in the text, but was in the chart of the poll is that although the overall opinion on HCR is close, with 44% supporting it against 51% opposed, the number of those who feel strongly about this is almost twice as many for those who oppose this. In other words those who are against it are angry---meaning this will be a motivator in coming elections.
Faced with these results, why are Democrats persevering in the face of such a clear political backlash. Oh, I have my theory. It could be the "Bridge of the River Kwai" syndrome, that when you have worked so hard on a project, you lose sight of the ultimate purpose, and just want to see the bridge built. Or it could be that the benefits of an alliance with the Medical Establishment is too strong to resist. This is the theory expounded by Harper's Magazine, that this will seal the marriage via the process of Regulatory Capture that I wrote about in this diary.
Another theory for those who went to Business School or studied psychology is called the Risky Shift an effect when groups, teams or even political parties become controlled by internal dynamics and take chances that individuals or outside observers would never engage in.
I have personally elaborated my arguments against this bill in a dozen or so diaries, and have even set up my own web site for those interested in my personal reasons, or you can look at my recent diaries from my user page. I believe that this site has had a dramatic change in the last day or so. So, I'll include a poll I've been running for about five weeks to check this.