Government-Run Health Care: They Can’t Be For Real….It Must Be A (Bad) Dream

If health care reform wasn’t such a serious issue with the lives and welfare of millions of Americans at stake, I might think President Obama and Democrats in Congress were playing one big national prank on us by suggesting the government should run health care.

But, the fact is, health care reform IS a serious issue, and so I have to presume then that the whole idea of government-run health care is in fact a bad dream; nay, a nightmare.

Consider the government’s recent report card:

  • Yesterday, the government-run aviation system failed, causing a domino effect of flight delays and cancellations for busy travelers across the country.
  • Jobs “created or saved” from the government stimulus package have in some cases been double and triple counted, and they’ve been “created and saved” in non-existent Congressional districts. Even the Administration’s director of communications for the stimulus package responded, “who knows man, who really knows” when questioned about the bogus job numbers.
  • As swine flu has swept the nation, the government’s response was recommending everyone get the H1N1 vaccination…oops, but there aren’t any vaccines to get because the government failed to provide them. (Interestingly though, they managed to find enough in the supply chain to give to detainees at Guantanamo Bay.)

The list of examples that demonstrate the government’s incompetence and ineptitude at running and managing a variety of programs and systems goes on and on…but I don’t need to…you get my point.

And, the American people get the point too. In March, just as health care reform was starting to be discussed in earnest, we asked Americans about the government’s role. Back then voters were split between providing government-run health care or it not being the government’s responsibility . Today, as Americans have watched the debate play out, they recognize the nightmare this might be, and by a 17-point margin they say it is not the government’s responsibility.*

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Underscoring this finding, a recent Gallup survey** shows for the first time a majority (50{09f965da52dc6ab4c1643a77bd40d1f729d807040cd8db540234bb981a782222}) saying it is not the federal government’s responsibility to make sure all Americans have health coverage (47{09f965da52dc6ab4c1643a77bd40d1f729d807040cd8db540234bb981a782222} say it is the government’s responsibility). And, in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll,*** 60{09f965da52dc6ab4c1643a77bd40d1f729d807040cd8db540234bb981a782222} of Americans say it is likely that a new government health insurance plan would force many private health insurers to go out of business because they couldn’t compete. A slew of other recently released polls also tell us Americans are saying they think their quality of care will go down and their costs will go up if President Obama and the Democrats in Congress pass their plan.

We have to wonder if the President and his Democratic caucus are paying any attention at all to the wish of the voters. They are so obsessed with passing their plan and meeting their liberal agenda that they’ve forgotten to consider the consequences of passing legislation that plunges Americans into the nightmare scenario of relying on the government for their care. If that happens, Americans might just give them a dose of their own medicine and deliver Democrats with their worst nightmare next November.

*Data from Public Opinion Strategies National Health Care Reform Survey, conducted November 9-11, 2009 among 700 registered voters.
**Data from Gallup national survey, compare home insurance companies conducted November 5-8, 2009 among 1,008 adults.
***Data from ABC News/Washington Post national survey, conducted November 12-15, 2009 among 1,001 adults.

 

Public Opinion Strategies