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There is no health care crisis, and doing no harm is far preferable to doing real damage to a good health care system. The real “public option” is to scrap the current grandiose plans and to start over. Furthermore, when asked what the president and Congress should now do about health care, 42 percent choose “scrap the current negotiations and start over from scratch” and 18 percent say leave our current health care alone - with only 39 percent saying they should keep working to pass something “by the end of the year.” So 60 percent prefer starting over or doing nothing to an Obama-style plan. A poll released today shows that 49 percent of Americans oppose “the health care reform plans being discussed in Congress,” while only 34 percent approve 36 percent “strongly” oppose the plans while only 16 percent “strongly” support them. Obama really isn’t our last, best hope for public policy changes in this area - or in any other.Īnd the American public isn’t buying it. After all, even if he were to prevail with some form of his legislation, others would come along with further and other reforms. He said, “I am not the first president to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last.” This suggests how grandiloquent his self-understanding is. He’s decided we all have to acquiesce in a massive overhaul of our health care system because.he’s decided he wants it. He’s decided a big victory on health care is key to his political success. There are a host of normal public policy issues dealing with health care that can be dealt with through the normal political process.īut that doesn’t suit Obama. So tonight, I return to speak to all of you about an issue that is central to that future - and that is the issue of health care.” In other words, health care - unlike, say, the financial system a few months ago - is not in a state of crisis. Indeed, the president acknowledged it isn’t: “But we did not come here just to clean up crises. And not to rally the nation in the face of some other crisis. Not to address the economy - even though unemployment continues to rise, the deficit is at an all-time high, and we face a truly worrisome debt burden in the years ahead. So President Obama invited himself into our living rooms tonight.why? Not to address questions of war and peace - even though we are fighting two wars overseas, and even though an avowed enemy and terror sponsor is rushing towards nuclear weapons.