Paging Dr. Obama
House Minority Leader John Boehner charged into the August recess predicting Democrats’ health-care agenda would result in their having a “very, very hot summer.” Mr. Boehner delivered a taste on Monday of the pressure the GOP intends to put on its rivals, releasing a video targeting President Obama’s health-care plans.
The video, which can be found here, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egcIKZoNGd8, is a spoof of a 1980’s commercial in which an actor explains “I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV.” The video replays clips of that phrase, spliced with President Obama’s meditations on kids’ tonsils, blue pills versus red pills, and the choice between surgery or pain killers. The commercial ends with a shot of a doctor’s prescription pad, on which is written, “ObamaCare: we aren’t doctors, but we know what’s best for you.”
The Web ad is clearly meant to be humorous, but also to deliver the central Republican message for the summer: Namely, the current Democratic health-care bills would rob Americans of health-care choice and quality, putting those decisions in the hands of Washington bureaucrats. The GOP has clearly been reading the polls, which show that the Obama Administration’s biggest problem at the moment is that, when it comes down to it, the vast majority of Americans are fairly satisfied with their existing health care, and are increasingly worried that Washington’s “reform” would cause them to lose that quality coverage.
Democrats also understand this is their greatest weakness, which is why in the past week they have shifted their message away from the difficult argument that reform would somehow save the federal government money, and instead set about reassuring Americans that they won’t lose any of their existing coverage. Mr. Obama & Co. remember well that it was a sharp turn in public opinion against Hillary Clinton’s reform plans in 1993-94, based on worries about government intervention, that tanked Congressional enthusiasm for legislation.
Mr. Boehner’s video is an indication that Republicans intend to hit hard on those same public concerns. The measure of their success will be the enthusiasm Blue Dog and freshmen Democrats retain for a sweeping bill when they return in September.
– Kim Strassel
Medicine costs more today because it does more. I was just reading Robert Stone’s Prime Green, a memoir of the 1960s, in which he suffered from blurred vision and went to the Stanford Medical School clinic, where some of the best doctors in the world drilled two holes in his skull to find out whether he has a brain tumor. (He didn’t.) That was before MRIs. Yet in 1993 Hillary Clinton was telling us about all the money “wasted” on high-tech equipment in the U.S. Every hospital in America wanted its own MRI machine while in Canada they got by with four for the whole country. Is this the amateur hour or what?