When explaining why the voters of Massachusetts turned Ted Kennedy’s seat over to a Republican, some commentators are suggesting that voters were appalled by the corruption they saw in Washington as Democrats struggled to put together health reform legislation:
Over at The Health Care Blog, Brian Klepper and David Kibbe write: “The distaste expressed yesterday probably has little to do with the specific provisions of the bills . . . . But along the way, voters have witnessed . . . lawmaking in its worst tradition. There was the White House's deal making with powerful corporate interests like the drug manufacturers even before the proceedings began. And the tremendous lobbying contributions by health care and non-health care special interests in exchange for access to the policy-shaping process. Or the outright bribery of specific Senators and Representatives in exchange for votes. Last week's White House deal with the unions that exempted them from the tax on ‘Cadillac’ health plans until 2018 must have seemed like a perfectly OK arrangement to the people in the center of all this activity, but to normal people who read the paper, it was emblematic of the current modus operandi: If you have power and support the party in power's muddled agenda, you get a special deal.”
The legislation fails to guarantee cost-control, the bill’s critics say, because the reformers sold out to special interests. (As I have explained in the past, I believe the bill opens the door to serious cost control, through Medicare, and that we don’t want politicians deciding the specifics on how and where to rein in health care spending. Some things don’t belong in the legislation.)
Robert Laszewki, editor of Healthcare Policy and Marketplace Review, is equally disgusted by the compromises: “We’ve seen the “Louisiana purchase” giving Senator Landrieu hundreds of millions for her vote, only to be upstaged by Ben Nelson’s Medicaid deal for Nebraska. Then the Democratic leadership claimed the $250 billion Medicare physician fee problem didn’t have anything to do with health care reform. Add to that a ‘robust’ Medicare commission that can’t touch doctor or hospital costs . . .”
Is this where Democrats went wrong? No.
The Voters Liked Scott Better
The Massachusetts vote was not a referendum on issues, or Washington politicians. As HealthBeat reader Pat S. points out: “Coakley was in the lead in polls by 20 points on January 1st, and the economy and health care have not changed since then, at least not in ways detectable by people who are not esoteric specialists. What did change is that Coakley insulted Red Sox fans, said that she didn't like to shake hands with voters if it meant she had to go out in the cold, came across as a bit out of it in a couple of debates, and so on. Voters also got to see that Brown was good looking, fairly articulate, and a general all-American boy, and didn't get much time to figure out what he really stood for.” (See Pat’s entire comment under “On Pelosi’s Statement.”
Personally, I have a hard time finding Brown appealing. I keep flashing back to his televised victory speech last night, where he offered up his two college-aged daughters to the crowd. (“Yes, they’re both available!”)
As Gail Collins noted in today’s Times, “He came off as a little strange . . . By the end, Even Glen Beck was weirded out.”
At that moment, as the girls squealed and his wife punched him in the arm, the entire Brown family reminded me of the Palins.
But I suspect Pat S. is right. Massachusetts voters weren’t thinking about issues, including health reform. They preferred Scott for the same reason so many liked Sarah: the personality and the face. They thought he was cute.
Let me add that you are going to be reading more and more stories about how Obama or Democrats failed us on health care reform. This is all Monday-morning quarterbacking.
As the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein wisely pointed out late today: “These stories are a function of outcomes, not objective assessments of performance. If health-care reform dies, the media will try and explain the Democrats' failure. That means they'll spend a lot of time talking about what Obama has done wrong.”
If by some miracle health care reform passes (and I still think it might still happen) Ezra’s suggests that there would then be “endless stories on what Obama did right, and how the Democrats finally passed this longtime priority.” Absolutely true. But Ezra believes that this would come to pass only “If Democrats simply refused to freak out and moved quickly to pass the Senate bill.” At the moment, he doesn’t think that’s likely.
I don’t know. But I do think that it is terribly important to set the record straight on what has happened during the past year of negotiations.
Making Deals Over HealthCare Reform—Hardly Unusual
“Deal-making” is not a process that the Obama administration or the liberals invented. This is how legislation is passed in Washington. Powerful interests and politicians in pivotal positions make demands. Legislators negotiate. Ultimately, some compromise is reached.
Make no mistake: I believe that we desperately need legislation that reforms and contains campaign contributions. Lobbyists have far too much influence in Washington. But unfortunately, I don’t see this Congress passing such a bill in the near future. I’m not endorsing “how the sausage is made.” I’m saying that I don’t think that healthcare reform can wait for campaign finance reform. It will be too late. In the meantime, there was nothing unique about what happened during this healthcare reform debate.
In fact, what is unusual is that over the last twelve months the process has been rather more transparent than usual. During the Bush years, Ben Nelson would have made his demands behind closed doors. The results would become known only after the fact—just as we learned, after the fact, that when the Republicans were ramming their Medicare Modernization Act through Congress (a.k.a. corporate welfare for insurers and Pharma) one Congressmen was bribed into joining the Republicans after being assured that the party would help get his son elected. I wrote about this here.
Trading your vote for a promise to influence an election seems to me much, much worse than asking for pork for your state. Legislators are expected to represent their states’ financial interests. They are not supposed to sell their votes to help family members realize their political ambitions.
Moreover, I would argue that special interests are no more powerful today than they were when Congress passed the most important piece of healthcare reform this nation has seen: Medicare.
How Medicare Was Passed
Years later, Joseph Califano, the Johnson administration’s domestic policy adviser, vividly remembered the key meeting where the deal was done. I quote him in Money-Driven Medicine:
“We sat in President Johnson’s little green office and he said ‘We’ve got to get this bill out of the House Ways and Means Committee. What will it take?”
“And Larry O’Brien [then the administration’s congressional liaison] said ‘We have to give the doctors what they want and the hospitals what they want.’
“Johnson said, ‘What will that cost? O’Brien said, ‘Half a billion dollars a year.’
“Johnson said, ‘Only $500 million a year? Give it to them. Let’s get the bill.”
As the legislation wended its way through Congress, more and more legislators left their thumbprints on it—in most cases, doing their best to represent a “special interest,” be it their home state, doctors, hospitals or the poor. At the very end of the process, the Senate Finance Committee tacked on 75 amendments of its own.
Southern Congressmen made a special demand regarding Medicaid: Healthcare providers who treated poor patients (under Medicaid) could not be paid as much as providers who care for older patients (under Medicare). They knew that many of the Medicaid patients would be black. Most of the Medicare patients would be white. (At that time, relatively few blacks lived past 65.) Medical apartheid represented a “special interest.” The Southern block made it clear that they would not vote for the bill unless their wishes were honored. LBJ realized he had no choice. This is why, even today, Medicare providers are paid roughly 70% of what they would receive if they were providing the same service to a Medicare patient.
Some might argue that, unlike today’s Democrats, LBJ was an expert wheeler-dealer. He didn’t give away the store. He cut a hard bargain, protecting tax-payers and the public interest. .
The truth is that Medicare would prove to be exorbitantly expensive: it laid the
foundation for the health care inflation that we are experiencing today.
Johnson had, in effect given doctors and hospitals a blank check.
Under the terms of the deal, doctors could charge Medicare what was “usual and customary” in their community—which left them free to change the baseline by continually hiking their fees.
In an interview, Dr. George Lundberg, former editor of The Journal of the American Medical Association, recalled how physicians ratcheted up Medicare reimbursements: “While surgeons were barred from fixing fees, they knew what the going rate was [in their region]. When new surgeons entered the community, they learned what prevailing fees were for given procedures and then they set their fees at a higher level.”
“Adam Smith might have predicted that a newcomer to a community would set lower fees in order to attract patients,” Lundberg told me, “but medicine was beyond supply and demand rules. When new surgeons sets higher fees, they not only got away with it, but also drove up prevailing fees for all surgeons.”
As I have explained in the past, when patients are looking for health care, they are not hunting for a bargain. Eighty percent of our health care dollars are spent when people are seriously, chronically ill. If a doctor charges less, they assume that he is not up to snuff. This is why the whole notion that “market forces” would bring down the cost of care if only “consumers” had transparent pricing information is delusional.
These “consumers” are “patients”: they are sick; sometimes they are frightened; often they are in pain; frequently they are old. Tell them that this physician or hospital offers cut-rate surgery and they will run in the opposite direction.
Meanwhile, when it came to paying hospitals, LBJ agreed to follow the precedent that Blue Cross had set, and pay hospitals, not what a service might be worth, but what it would cost them to provide that service. To this day, we continue to over-pay inefficient hospitals: the more it costs them to deliver the service, the more they are paid. If a patient develops an infection, and stays longer in the hospital, the bill goes up. If the patient suffers preventable complications following surgery, the bill sky-rockets.
Why did LBJ agree to such terms? In part because he knew that time was of the essence. If he didn’t push the bill through Congress, using the fresh memory of a martyred president as cover, he might not have another chance.
But LBJ also thought that before long, health care prices would begin to come down. When he made the deal, he knew that each year, more hospitals were being built and more specialists were entering the profession. He assumed that, over time, competition would lead to lower costs.
Like most other people, Johnson expected that the health care market would work like other markets. He was, of course, wrong. This is totally counter-intuitive (as are so many things about healthcare), but we now know that in a town where there are more hospitals and doctors, prices are higher, not lower. In order to compete, hospitals buy more equipment and invest in hotel-like amenities. In order to pay for it, they must charge more. Doctors vying for patients buy pricey real estate and hire decorators to design their waiting rooms.
The Next Step: A Bi-Partisan Market-Based Solution?
Forgive me for meandering from my original topic: whether health care reformers “sold out” to the lobbyists, and this is why they are losing the war.
But the same folks who accuse the Democrats of letting special interests design health care reform tend to believe that “markets” are the best solution to any problem. (See Naomi’s post below on the Republican proposals for reform.) If we just give “consumers” enough choices, they will make wise decisions, lifting the quality of care while controlling the price.
Conservatives are market fundamentalists and they believe that it is always best to “let the market decide.” This is one reason why commentators like Klepper, Kibbe and Laslewski have argued that we need “bi-partisan reform.”
I return to these three commentators because, although I strongly disagree, I believe that they make the clearest, most articulate argument for those who favor “bi-partisans reform.” And as Naomi notes in her post below. the most recent USA TODAY/Gallup Poll suggests that this point of view has reached the public: “Some 55% of Americans say President Obama and congressional Democrats should . . . . consider alternatives that would draw more Republican support.”
Though today, Laszewski, who has long insisted that bi-partisanship is a prerequisite for reform, acknowledged that, at this point, any hope of hands-across the aisle saving health care legislation is dead:
“The problem with bipartisanship now is that the Republican base is not about to let any of their own Senators do anything to take the Dems off the political meat hook they are now dangling from.”
I agree.
I would say that, for conservatives, this fight has always been less about improving health care in America (some would say we already have the best health care in the world), and more about “breaking Obama” as Senator Jim DeMint (Rep., S. C.) famously put it last year. (Today, The Hill reports, DeMint is taking some credit for the Massachusetts victory, and for declaring that the health care debate could be President Obama's "Waterloo.”)
By contrast, over at The Health Care Blog, Klepper and Kibbe (who in the past have agreed with Laszewski), hold out hope for a “new bipartisan movement” in Congress: “Undoubtedly, many Republicans are now rejoicing over the Democrats' loss and the possible defeat of any health care reform legislation,” they wrote today. “That's unfortunate. The health care crisis is real and remains unaddressed.”
Not only do we need help from Republicans who understand markets, Klepper often argues that we need the market’s leaders, the CEOs of some of this nation’s largest non-health care corporations to lead the charge by “galvanizing, mobilizing and championing reforms.” .
In the past, Klepper has suggested that: “The most promising scenario for meaningful reform would be for non-health care business leaders to come together around a set of structural (not ideological) change principles, jump start a larger effort that recruits the support of the whole of American business, and exerts its overwhelming influence on Congress for real change. This is where the power in America lies.” [my emphasis]
In other words, forget about “good government” bringing us health care reform designed for the public good. Legislators always sell their soul to the lobbyists. Forget about physicians, nurses, public health experts and others reforming the system from within.
The nation’s CEOs have the real clout in this country. Let them do the job.
After all, employers pay roughly 30 percent of the nation’s health care bills, and have a vested interested in corralling health care costs. If they could unite to pursue the common interest—better health for all Americans at an affordable price —they could become a major force for change.
Or, so the theory goes.
One question remains: aren’t the CEO’s of these for-profit corporations also lobbyists who represent their own corporate interests?
And how would they resolve the inevitable conflict between doing what is best for their employees (making better care available even to the sickest and poorest of their workers), and doing what is best for their shareholders (doing everything possible to cut the slash of care, even if this means shifting the burden to those who can least afford higher premiums.)? See #4 on Naomi’s list of Republican proposals in her post “Can We Really Have a Bipartisan Health Care Plan” below.
This leads me to the “Safeway Solution,” which I plan to write about tomorrow.
I think you have it all wrong Maggie and that Klepper and Kibbe at The Health Care Blog have it just about exactly right.
Independent voters (like me) don’t decide until the last minute. We may report leaning one way or the other, but we don’t choose until we have to so if new information comes in we decide based on all available stuff.
This is very different from how partisans choose (or don’t choose if they are indeed partisans).
I think you are misreading this in a big way. Your assessment is the most partisan hopeful and creative attempt I have seen yet though to explain this away. Don’t blame Coakley, don’t blame Obama, just look at this guy’s abs for goodness sakes, how could he loose!!!!
It is time for real change in Washington and then for real change in Healthcare after that.
Ed–
I’m confused by what you say.
Why do you think the Democratic candidate in Mass. was leading until Jan. 1??
Was there a major change in the issues between Jan. 1 and this week?
I don’t think there was, which is why I am persauded by Pat S’s argument that voters in Mass voted for Brown becaue they liked him better–much as voters voted for George Bush (twice) because he is the sort of guy they would like to have a beer with.
Maggie, I think what I wrote was very clear.
I’m certainly not interested in being baited into an arguement with you.
I think you are misreading this. Obama came into office on a platform of “transformational change”. You can certainly argue that he never intended to govern that way, but that is the way that he sold himself. Then he surrounded himself with the very bankers that created the financial crisis, gave them money with no strings attached, while the rest of the country twisted in the wind (the stimulus was way too timid). Voters know this, and in Mass, polling showed that they were upset over it.
Now look at HCR. Obama ended up contradicting every campign promise he made. “Strong public option” “No mandate” “Transparency” (Jon Gruber? don’t make me laugh!) Then the whole sausauge making process was dragged out way too long in public view (I admit, that was “transparent”), and by the time of Mass, his credibility was shot. No one believed him, no one believed that HRC, as ponied up in that steaming pile of sh*t called the Senate bill, offered anything much beyond a massive giveaway to the InsCos. This is arguable, but I’ve studied every source I can find and I’m still undecided whether on the whole it is a plus or minus, and I’m a Dem that voted for him.
I think the data show that a) Coakely was probably the worst candidate in the history of politics, and 2) Mass was a Show of Confidence Vote on the Obama admin, and they lost big time.
“With all due respect, it’s not the Kennedy seat, … it’s the People’s seat.”
OK. polling data confirms my previous post. From reaserch 2000
VOTERS OVERWHELMINGLY SUPPORT THE PUBLIC OPTION
* 82% of Obama voters who voted for Brown
* 86% of Obama voters who stayed home
OBAMA VOTERS WANT DEMOCRATS TO BE BOLDER
* 57% of Brown voters say Obama “not delivering enough” on change he promised
* 49% to 37% among voters who stayed home
There is still a desire for change, and voters see that Obama is not delivering it. Throwing the public option under the bus was a very bad move for public support.
Doc 99, marku, ed, marku–your second comment
Doc 99– Of course you are right. But since Kennedy died so recently–and in the end, was so widely admirte ( despite his deep flaws) many in Mass. thought of it as “the Kennedy seat.”
marku-
I agree Coakley was not a good candidate.
But if Mass. voters are so unhappy with Obama and the Democrats on the issues, then why was she way ahead in the polls Jan. 1?
What has changed about the issues since Jan 1?
The fact that she was ahead– until the voters saw a little more of her–does suggest that this had little to do with Washington or issues, and much to do with personalities. (Which is how U.S. voters normally vote.)
Secondly, during the primary, Obama’s chief health care adviser, David Cutler, said that Obmama understood that if most people wouldnt’ sign up for insurance volutnarily , we would have to have a mandate. I interviewed Cutler and wrote about this during the primary.
The notion that we could tell insurers that they couldn’t turn down people with pre-existing condtitoin and not have a mandate made no sense.
People woudl simply wait until they got sick before signing up for insurance, and because the pool would be comprised primarily of sick people it would be prohibitively expensive. Anyone who thought about it understood this.
As for the platform of “transformational change”– that’s a campaign slogan that may have appealed to very young people who had never paid much attention to politics, and read little or any history, but it was just a slogan.
That’s not how change happens. It’s not magic. It’s hard work.
Civil rights took about about 15 years– the movmeent didn’t begin until after WW II and then a great many people had to sit in, teach in, march–and give up their lives–to make it happen.
And civil rights is still a work in progress.
Medicare took years and years.
Women’s rights, Gay rights, . .
I found the “transformational change” meme off-putting and naive. It was all part of the “Obama the rock star/incredibly cool celebrity” image that too many of his supporters pushed.
So I’m just not that surprised that he couldnt’ “trasnsform” Washington or Wall Street.
On Wall Street and the banking crisis, Obama is just in Way Over His Head.
He knows virtually nothing about international banking, or Wall Street. Coming in he was quite clueless as to just how corrupt Wall Street is.
Since I covered Wall street for more than 12 years at Barron’s, and wrote a book titled “Bull! A History of the Boom 1982-1999” even I know more about Wall Street and int’l finance than Obama does—and I’m not president.
The people who voted for Obama (rather than Hillary) might have thought about his youth and lack of experience when they elected him.
But to be fair, no one person could know (Or would be likely to know) what they would need to know to deal with the mess that Bush left behind in terms of a) the Middle East, internatninoal politics, diplomancy and
militiary strategy b) economics, domoestic and global and c) health care which is, as Orszag understands, the greatest threat to the domestic economcy.
But Obama needs better advisors both on the wars and on economics and banking. He should be listening to Volcker, Stiglitz and an array of international financial experts– folks in Switzerland, Germany, Hong Kong, etc. There is a terrible lack of sophistication in his approach to these problems.
He needs people who are much older and have deep and broad experience–Volcker, for example.
Ed–
I’m not trying to bait you into an argument. Nor am I trying to tell you how and why you vote.
I’m simply saying that the polls showed that on Jan. 1 the majority of voters preferred thd Democrat–by a wide margin.
Nothing major changed in terms of the issues– this supports Pat’s thesis that most people (certainly not all) were voting on appearnace and personality..
We have much reserach showing that most American voters don’t vote on the issues–so this isn’t unusual.
They simply liked Bush better than the two Democrats they ran against– he was the sort of guy they would like to have a beer wtih. This is how most political analysts explain his re-election.
They alos liked Bill Clinton and Reagan– which goes a long way toward explaining why they were elected twice.
I believe that you pay attention to the issues, but you don’t represent the majority of Americans.
marku–
Obasma did not “throw the public option under the bus.”
We almost had it. And Obama made it clear that he supported it. He just wasn’t willing to say that he absolutely would not sign a bill without it.
(If you read the legisaltion, you would see why. A great many people would be helped even without the public option. See my posts “glass half-empty/half full” parts 1, 2, and 3.) (And the public option could be added later. Nothing would happen for 3 years–maybe 4.)
We almost had the public option. The only reason that we don’t is that Joe Lieberman stood up and said I”m going to stop this.”
The other moderates would not have held firm if they had not had a leader with so much experience in the Senate and clout (not to mention sheer arrogance).
We were that close . . .
Finally, your poll info doesn’t explain what Mass voters were thinking . .
Poll commentary? I think it reads as:
Without the PO, we do not trust this bill to keep the InsCos honest.
And the Dem base and indepents (the people that voted for Obama) didn’t find that his actions were coinciding with his rhetoric, some saw no particular reason to go to the polls for Coakely, and some that a vote for Brown was a protest vote for the way their wishes had been ignored.
Obama did throw the PO under the bus. If he had indicated that he would not sign a bill without it, Reid would have had to find some way to pay off that crook Lieberman. And you have indicated you see nothing wrong with this. So the PO just wasn’t that important to Obama. Unfortunately, it was just that important to people that wanted to believe that the InsCos would be reigned in. Removing it left them feeling naked, mandated, and ignored. That may be right or wrong, but that was the feeling (I feel that way myself)
Doc99’s point is a valid one. The polls really didn’t beging to move to Brown until around Jan 10-13. Brown’s campaign was really able to hammer home the entitled narrative and it started with Gergen’s question at the debate and continued with the in the cold, shaking hands statement. The outsider sentiment is real so far this election cycle. It’s shown 3 times now in Mass, Virginia and New Jersey. A flawed candidate is not a death knell for a campaign, entitlement and being framed as an insider is. After all if you are a politician don’t get caught with dead woman or a live boy unless you live in Massachusetts. Massachusetts has never had a problem with a flawed candidate, they have a problem with entitled one in this climate.
Jenga–
I think you mean “Pat S’s” point–assuming that you are saying that you agree that the voters were voting based on personality and that the Democratic candidate who didn’t want to go out in the cold and shake hands seemed too “entitled.”
I also agree that Mass. voters accept flawed politicians. . The Kennedys (many of whom have been tragically flawed) taught them that.
Some of the Kennedys, and some of those around them have also paid an enormous price for those flaws.
And through no fault of their own, the Kennedy’s also been the victims of tragedies: assassinations, cancer that caused a young boy to lose a leg, brothers and sons dying at an early age.
The Mass. public has seen all of that, which, I think, is why they have been so forgiving.
I would add that I have great respect for how Ted Kennedy stuck it out in Congress, never giving up, always hiring good staff and doing his best to get something accomplished–despite his own flaws as a human being (which killed his chances of ever becoming president) despite what happened to his brothers, and despite the fact that, for most of the last 30 years, he was one of very few liberals in Congress , and his party was in the minority most of the time.
It would have been very, very easy to give up.
With his wealth he could have retired and had a much easier life.
Jenga–
I think you mean “Pat S’s” point–assuming that you are saying that you agree that the voters were voting based on personality and that the Democratic candidate who didn’t want to go out in the cold and shake hands seemed too “entitled.”
I also agree that Mass. voters accept flawed politicians. . The Kennedys (many of whom have been tragically flawed) taught them that.
Some of the Kennedys, and some of those around them have also paid an enormous price for those flaws.
And through no fault of their own, the Kennedy’s also been the victims of tragedies: assassinations, cancer that caused a young boy to lose a leg, brothers and sons dying at an early age.
The Mass. public has seen all of that, which, I think, is why they have been so forgiving.
I would add that I have great respect for how Ted Kennedy stuck it out in Congress, never giving up, always hiring good staff and doing his best to get something accomplished–despite his own flaws as a human being (which killed his chances of ever becoming president) despite what happened to his brothers, and despite the fact that, for most of the last 30 years, he was one of very few liberals in Congress , and his party was in the minority most of the time.
It would have been very, very easy to give up.
With his wealth he could have retired and had a much easier life.
I did mean Doc 99 in that when he made that statement about being the people’s seat in the debate. That was exact time there was a tangible shift in the polls towards Brown. I think the poll results were less about personality and more about successfully casting her instantly as an insider and him as the outsider. I think elections are far to complex to cubby hole their results as a referendum on healthcare on the right or a bad candidate on the left. Elections can mean whatever you want them to, but the economy rules supreme over all arguments. The lesson to be learned in a bad economy if you can cast your opponent as a part of the establishment or an insider you can win anywhere. With Massachusetts history of tolerating flawed candidates, none of her gaffe’s would have been mortal in a normal economy, they definitely hurt her in this climate. I think the elction was way too complex to attribute the results entirely to his personality.
Agreed jenga. And that was the point of my earlier post. You can take all the polls you want before the last week or two, but independents don’t decide who to vote for until they enter the voting booth. Sure we lean one way or the other or even mess around with the pollster by answering opposite the leaning.
But if one doesn’t understand that there are such things as independent voters who don’t fall in lock step with a party you simply can’t understand the Mass Massacre.
Everyone– I’m posting about polling which shows who in Mass. voted for Brown and why.
That will answer some questions.
Then I’ll come back and respond to your individual
comments
I thought Dan McLaughlin at The New Ledger had a more reasoned explanation for Brown’s win. He’s really kind of a RINO – that the Tea Party types like to knock. I think for the purposes of Massachusetts he’s more not a Democrat.
As someone who was going to be on the paying and not the subsidized end of Health Reform I was OK with the bill as it stood.
The union deal was crummy but not that unusual given that everyone else had cut their own deal, and was to be expected given the President’s debt to unions.
But now that Brown has been elected I’m just as glad that the bill is up for a re-do.
Ginger C & ED
Ginger C–
Unless you have a health plan that costs you rand your employer more than $23,000 a year (for a family) you won’t be on the paying end of health care reform.
Though I should say, if you live in state where insurers were able to refuse to cover sick people, your pool will now include more sick people, and so your premiums might be higher.
On the other hand, if you work for a small company, are self-employed or unemployed and buying your own insurance, you’ll now be part of a group and eligible for significantly lower premiums . . .
Ed–
I’m writing about “Exit polls”– this means the voters were polled after they left the voting booth.
By then, they did know how they voted and presumably had some idea of why they votedthat way.
It is time for real change in Washington and then for real change in Healthcare after that.