From uExpress
By Ted Rall

Half measures are boring.

That political reality derailed Bill Clinton’s 1993 healthcare reform plan. And it will likely unravel that of Barack Obama.

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office finds that Obama’s plan, sponsored by Senators Chris Dodd and Ted Kennedy, “would reduce the number of uninsured only by a net 16 million people. Even if the bill became law, the budget office said, 36 million people would remain uninsured in 2017,” reported The New York Times. Yet it would cost at least $1 trillion over ten years.

Americans like Obama’s basic idea: “Seventy-two percent of those questioned [in the latest Times/CBS News poll] supported a government-administered insurance plan–something like Medicare for those under 65–that would compete for customers with private insurers. Twenty percent said they were opposed.” The support is broad. But it isn’t deep.

“Pay higher taxes for a healthcare plan that probably won’t help you personally, even if you’re uninsured” isn’t much of a sales pitch. No one is going to call their Congressman, much less march in the streets, to demand action for a half-measure–or, in this case, a quarter-measure. Without public pressure to push back against drug and insurance company lobbyists, nothing will change.

Like every mainstream Democrat since Jimmy Carter, Obama is a militant moderate, elevating triangulation and compromise-for-its-own-sake to the status of Holy Writ. But radical problems–and the state of healthcare in America surely qualifies–require radical solutions.

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