It is not November 6, 2008

One of the odd things about “health care reform” is that you simply cannot kill it. It has been a staple of Democrat Party politics dating back to Harry Truman and has always been controversial for various reasons.

One reason is that it matches “compassion” against “economic reality”. Everybody has health and everybody has loved ones and everybody wants their health and their loved ones taken care off. However, taking care of “health” is a service and requires the ones that perform it to be paid. It also requires the people that perform it to be smarter than the average bear and so these people go to school for a very long time and acquire an incredible amount of educational expense. Additionally, performing this service opens these very smart people to an incredible amount of personal liability, as it should because those lesser among us have to trust that these folks know what they are doing.

Part of the problem with both sides of the debate is that some act like neither side of the argument exists. It is great to have compassion and to promise everyone health care for “free”. But, nothing is “free” and it has to be paid for by somebody.

A perfect example of this is “pre-existing” denials by insurance companies. Due to the current awful economy, if a person loses their job, they lose their health insurance.If they are fortunate enough to find another job, they may not be eligible for new plan’s health insurance for a condition the person might have.

That sounds very mean and is not very compassionate. But, the economic reality is that insurance is based on one word: risk. Health insurance is more expensive than other insurances because your risk of needing medical attention is greater than your house catching on fire,as an example. The risk of a person with a “pre-existing” condition becoming sick and needing medical attention due to that condition increases the risk. It would be like insuring a teen age boy for a Jaguar after he’s had several wrecks and speeding tickets.

Into this debate, comes President Obama, who it is becoming increasingly clear, ran for President simply because it seemed like a cool thing to do at the time. He does not bring any economic understanding to the debate, like his suggestion that the current Healthcare Reform Bill would decrease premiums of group health insurance by (his words) “three thousand per-cent” and enable your boss to “give you a raise”. Really.

If there is one thing we have learned in this year long debate about health care is that no one really knows what will happen to costs when it takes place. It is hard to believe to you can contain costs by increasing demand with a stable or decreased supply.

It is also clear that the President, his advisors, and the Congressional leadership still think this is November 6, 2008. The President is no longer as popular as he was—his bully pulpit has become a Nag pulpit. He is no longer trying to convince people, he’s just trying to nag them into doing what he thinks is right.

This is where the “just ram it through” guys are wrong. If the President was a popular now as he was on November 6, 2008, he could “ram” through healthcare reform. But he is not. Nobody is going to sacrifice a career for a President is leaking popularity like a tire with a nail.

What is funny is that the President and the Democrats could have gotten some of this piecemeal, like doing away with “pre-existing” conditions in insurance policies and they would have had bipartisan support. The problem for them is that it is no longer November 6, 2008 and doesn’t look like it is going to be anytime soon.