Americans Are Cluing In To Obama's Healthcare Reform Problems, Polls Show

By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog.

The American public seems to be waking up to the mess that President Obama has created as he tries to revamp the nation's health care system. According to Bloomberg:

As Congress returns this week to craft the legislation, Obama's push to revamp an industry that makes up 17 percent of the nation's economy will need support from American families earning between $50,000 and $100,000 a year, a group that pollsters define as middle class and which makes up about a quarter of the electorate. That backing is shaky, polls show.

...Obama's problem is that if middle-class voters are concerned that his plan focuses more on the estimated 46 million uninsured than on reducing their own costs, they may oppose significant changes in health care, analysts say.

Last month, 58% of American adults told CNN pollsters they are "very concerned" that current efforts to reform the health care system will reduce the quality of health care they receive.

It's about time, America! There are several problems, here. There's President Obama's repeat problem that he's trying, with this reform, to please everyone and in the process he's pleasing no one. He sent an amorphous plan to Congress, in the hope members would compromise in a bipartisan spirit which dissipated 15 years ago, to produce a plan the public would support.

Mr. Obama also broke his promise not to raise taxes on the middle class (whose tax-free health insurance premiums may now be taxed in the Obama reform effort).

He needs to lead more and rely on nonexistent bipartisanship less.

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By Bonnie Erbe