I can't remember how many times it has been noted here or on the editorial page that once government starts something it's almost impossible to get it undone. It's always depressing to see one more example:
The Quinnipiac polls, conducted in three states across the past month, all find likely voters to have complex and contradictory views on these repeal lawsuits as well as health care reform itself.
By a slight majority, likely voters tend to oppose the health care reform law. But they also tend to oppose the repeal lawsuits as a “bad idea” that would, for a sizeable portion of voters, make them “less likely” to support a given candidate. In short, voters simultaneously don't want to health care reform but don't want to challenge it either.
And so it goes grows. Politicians aren't stupid. As they pick up on voter sentiment, they will stop campaigning on repealing the reform. We've said this many times before, too: Government has tended to grow because people like government doing things for them, even when they say otherwise. They just don't always like to pay for them being done.
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Leo. "Government has tended to grow because people like government doing things for them, even when they say otherwise."
Our new socialist overlords were banking on that when they rammed all those bills through.
And, Tim, unfortunately they appear to have been correct! Just like the proverbial "sheep to the slaughter"!
There are a few other reasons for the apparent contradictions noted in the Quinnipiac polls. One, I think, could be fatigue. People on either side of the debate are just worn out over the issue, and only the most rigidly opposed have the will to keep up the fight. Another could be that the perceptions of what the reform actually entails (ie, death panels) were so wildly exaggerated by some of the opponents that opposition waned a bit among some when they discovered the reality of the reform. Yet another could be that those who tended to oppose the reform the most, including the most ideological of them, also tend to look negatively at lawsuits as a way to correct what they think is wrong.
Proponents of the "health insurance premium dollars redistribution bill" (the bill doesn't address health care costs at all but rather only how to have group A pay the premiums for group B and how to spend more money) always take issue with the phrase "death panels" yet cannot dispute their existence.
Is it an exaggeration to call a panel of people (be they insurance company execs or government health & human services employees) whose sole job is to determine the length of someones care/life a "death panel"?
Will the process be somehow more humane by calling the panel the "End of Life Services Panel"..? or the even more benign "Health Care Resource Allocation Panel"?
Just as renaming the battle in Iraq or Afghanistan "OverSeas Contingency Operations" or terrorist attacks "man-made disasters", it still is what it is.
Semantics.
People are confused, and rightly so, but they become much less confused over a period of time as page after page of the 2700 foisted upon us begins affecting their real lives and paychecks. Can you imagine the level of animosity when all those regular Joe Democrats realize it really IS their mother getting the plug pulled, and their kids waiting months for treatment? Sooner or later reality sets in, and as it does it's going to get ugly for the politicians that shoved this down our throats.
Hang on, it's gonna be a bumpy road from here on out.