It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to know that Ted Kennedy’s/Christopher Dodd’s/President Obama’s health care plan is on life support. It’s on life support and getting more unstable by the minute because of the details of the legislation:

It’s only money, we like to say, when we know we shouldn’t be pulling out our wallets, but.

The ‘but’ is a big one when it comes to health care reform: huge, immense, Himalayan. So big we’re not going to do it, I’ll bet you money. Not this year we’re not, because we’ve barely started to think this thing through. We’re not ready as a country, as a people, to have President Obama and his congressional minions shove down our throats a new, costly, coercive plan for reordering the way we care of ourselves, or for that matter don’t care.

The Democratic-controlled Congressional Budget Office, no aerie of Reaganite stool pigeons, says health care reform a la Ted Kennedy and Chris Dodd (the Affordable Health Choices Act) would leave more than twice as many Americans uninsured as it would protect, sort of, 36 million to 16 million, respectively. The CBO says, further, the bill would increase federal budget deficits by $1 trillion between 2010 and 2019.

President Obama’s press secretary is already backpedalling from Kenndy’s legislation at speeds not seen in Washington since Chuck Schumer developed a love affair with microphones:

“This is not the Administration’s bill,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said in a statement following the Congressional Budget Office’s analysis of Sen. Ted Kennedy’s health care reform legislation, “and it’s not even the final Senate Committee bill.”

Frankly, this is too big a transformation to be run through Congress with this little time fully discussing the details. This legislation didn’t have a surge in popularity because of the details. Its surge was in spite of the ugly details.

I suspect that this will go the route of HillaryCare now that it’s taking on water. There are numerous reasons for it getting rejected, not the least of which is the fact that a majority of people simply don’t trust the federal government to get something this complex right. Regardless of election outcomes, that fact still matters more than all others…Combined.

People’s collective memories include images of Katrina and President Obama’s stimulus bill. Both are seen as collossal failures. Those two things contribute alot to why people don’t trust government. Mr. Murchison is right about this, too:

The CBO calculates that 15 million Americans would exit their private plans if Kennedy-Dodd were imposed. Coverage from other sources would fall by 8 million, the CBO says. This is progress? Large numbers of Americans may be forgiven, perhaps, if they differ on that trivial point.

We’re supposed to spend well over a trillion dollars to insure an additional 16,000,000 people who aren’t currently insured? At a time when we’re running gigantic annual deficits? When people are feeling overtaxed already? Good luck selling that mostrosity of legislation.

They’ll need more than luck passing Sen. Kennedy’s legislation if Bernie Sanders keeps writing op-eds like this one. Here’s part of what Bernie said:

Despite the fact that we spend almost twice as much per person on healthcare as any other country, our healthcare outcomes lag behind many other nations. According to the World Health Organization, the United States ranks 37th in terms of health system performance and we are far behind many other countries in terms of such important indices as infant mortality, life expectancy, and preventable deaths.

The main reason we get such bad results is that the function of private health insurance companies is not to provide quality healthcare for all, but to make huge profits for those who own the companies. With thousands of different health benefit programs designed to maximize profits, private health insurance companies spend an incredible 30 percent of each healthcare dollar on administration and billing, exorbitant CEO compensation packages, advertising, lobbying, and campaign contributions. Public programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and the department of Veterans Affairs are administered for far less.

As I said yesterday, the value we get from our current system is better than the rationing that exists wherever the single-payer system is used. Thus, the question becomes whether we want higher taxes to pay for a rationing system with inferior results or whether we want the current system modified to maximize the product. That isn’t a difficult question to me.

Technorati: Reforms, Health Care, Single-Payer, President Obama, Ted Kennedy, Chris Dodd, Bernie Sanders, Tax Increases, CBO, Uninsured

Cross-posted at California Conservative