Just one example.

If you eliminate the ability of insurance companies to exclude people for pre-existing conditions and then you don’t require people to have insurance, then could everyone just go without insurance until they get sick?

And if you require everyone to have insurance, don’t you have to do something about those people who would have trouble affording it?

Pat Caddell’s analysis indicates that Democratic Party hubris on the health care bill may be just the catalyst Republicans need to change the game in November. It certainly opens the door to the possibility that if the majority changes the rules for t…

Kranky, the truly poor are already eligible for Medicaid in most states; the increase in subsidies will go to the ‘working poor’ and lower middle class workers. In the end, the subsidies will cause health care prices to rise. Health insurance costs for everyone else will increase according to the CBO. The thing the Dems have going for them is they front loaded the goodies like elimination of pre-existing conditions prior to most of the cuts and tax increases to play for the plan. So if they do pass it, and glowing media reports trumpet these facts, they may be able to mask that the increase in costs is due to this bill when the increases start hitting later.

I’m off on vacation for a week, so I’m not ignoring you guys after tonight!

I wonder though, just because it may be a political risk – does that influence the inherent right or wrong embodied in the effort and the provisions?

I agree the political risks are big and Dems are fighting an uphill battle if health care reform doesn’t produce the changes they predict. But I applaud them, because they are taking a risk that has seemed politically infeasible to many, but is just the right thing to do. I wish there was more of that than political posturing.

Slightly less than half of Americans support the current bill. In none of the polls do they make any mention of asking the folks polls how much they know about the bill. So we don’t know if the uninformed are more negative or more positive, and so on.

But some folks WILL benefit from this bill. In particular, poor folks who can expect subsidized health insurance soon might discover they like this bill, while previously they had perhaps just been echoing media rancor.

I don’t believe it would be at all unprecedented for this reform to get a post-passage bump in the polls. People will be glad the battle is over for the time being, and might well talk themselves into it, especially given that it helps provide care to poor Americans at time when times are hard.

We won’t really know whether the public opinion battle has been lost until the fall elections. I still think the sentiment will be a broad anti-incumbent statement, not one targeted specifically at democrats. Time will tell.