What precisely is Obama trying to push through and why are people (obviously the insurance companies have a vested interest but everyone I mean) so vehemently opposed?
no one is exactly sure what he/the Dems who are with him are trying to push thru, which is part of the problem. there are like 5 or 6 different committees in the Senate "studying" various health bill proposals. what they say in public is contradictory & sometimes incoherent, tho partially this owes to the party being divided on a lot of key points, & tbf Obama himself has been nothing less than eloquent every time he's spoken on it. of course, talking is what he does best. I dunno if he has the LBJ-style juice to threaten/cajole/wheedle to straight up force a bill thru.
I think a lot of the unbridled anger you see pouring out has little or nothing to do w/health care reform itself, at least not the nitty gritty policy points. it has everything to do w/what health care reform symbolizes, & more with the fear that a big segment of white America feels about well, the decline of white America. if you look at the complaints people bring up, aside from the "this country will become Russia" nonsense, it's stuff like illegal immigrants, whether or not Federal tax dollars will fund abortions. it's also very visceral - I get the feeling that the things that really make people afraid & angry are too big/abstract for them to address & that health care reform is largely a forum, an easy target, for them to lash out at. I also think it's a huge mistake, & a bit messed up, to lump them all in as "mental rednecks".
right now I reckon conservative pundits - the Beck/Limbaugh/Hannity etc line - & the insurance lobbies are kinda riding a tiger by whipping up all this mob sentiment. it could spin out of their control real quick, which is considerably more worrying than people shouting at elected officials in "town meetings".
And is he gonna be successful in having it made law?
I'd like to think so but I'm pretty dubious. the Democrats always find a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory & this seems like no exception. what I suspect will happen is that a watered down bill, one that has been picked over by the vultures from the insurance industry & various other interest groups, will eventually be passed. it will be largely ineffective & we'll wind up doing this all over again in 5 or 10 years, but from an even worse position than we're in now. if this sounds familiar it's b/c that's how we handle a lot of things in the U.S.
