Saturday, August 1, 2009 — Culpeper, VA.  We are winding up the final day of a week-long bus tour through 26 towns in Virginia where we’ve been talking to large gatherings of Virginians about what ObamaCare would mean for them and their families.  There is something electric in the air at these gatherings.  People feel something is amiss in Washington, and their resistance to it is palpable. 

All over the Commonwealth people have been telling us they believe Washington is out of control.  First it was the banks, then big insurance companies, then automobile companies and now healthcare.  People are demanding that the federal takeovers stop. 

The thought of the federal government taking over healthcare terrifies people.  The revelation that the health bill in the U.S. House of Representatives (H.R. 3200) would mandate “end-of-life counseling” every five years for every American age 65 and older has galvanized people’s opposition to a federal takeover.  Although nothing in the bill explicitly requires medical care to be withheld from sick seniors, it is clear that the system being established is designed to control healthcare costs by pinching the flow and supply of care to seniors—all under the guise of “cost containment.” 

The President is proposing a “cut-Medicare-first” strategy of cost control, and people have caught on.  On top of that, the provision in the bill for mandatory “life counseling” (read “death and dying counseling”) is the final straw that convinces seniors that nationalized healthcare will put them out in the cold and into an early grave.  As one woman told me in Gate City, “the federal government just wants me to feel guilty for going on living.”

Early in the week, I traveled with the folks from Americans for Prosperity on their “Hands Off My Healthcare Express” all over southwest Virginia where Congressman Rick Boucher (D) represents the ninth congressional district—the Appalachian “Fighting 9^th.”  If ever there was a case of a Member of Congress who “runs conservative” at home and votes liberal in Washington, it is Boucher.  For example, earlier this year he sold out his coal-country district by voting with the Greens on Cap-and-Trade legislation.

But on healthcare, Boucher is feeling the heat.  Constituents flooded his office with calls and letters, and yesterday he voted against the House health bill when it came to a vote in the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

But that isn’t the end of the story.  Boucher also provides a case study of how we can expect the political drama on healthcare to play out as we head into this congressional recess and beyond.  Democrats like Boucher, who represent conservative districts and are feeling the heat from constituents, are attempting to tip toe through a political mind field as they try both to satisfy the folks back home while they toe the party line in Washington.

The first thing to realize is that House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi has a number of free passes to hand out to Democrats like Boucher.  We saw this phenomenon on Cap-and-Trade when she was able to release 42 Democrats to vote against the measure, which carried the House by a margin of 219 to 212—which makes it crystal clear how out of touch Boucher has become with his district. 

The drill works this way.  First, the majority leader determines how many of her flock want to vote against the measure.  Then she gets about the business of buying and intimidating as many Republican votes as possible (she got eight Republicans on Cap-and-Trade).  Finally, when she knows how many yea votes she can rely on, she distributes free passes to as many of her Democrats in a pinch as she can allowing them to vote against the party line and still leave a safe margin of victory. 

In the case of healthcare, the game is going to be a little more complicated since it will involve tacit coordination between the House and the Senate and between the Democratic Leadership and critical Senate Republicans—all designed to give Democrats such as Boucher a safe path around the voters.  Again, Congressman Boucher illustrates how it will happen.

Boucher has prepared the ground by drawing a false distinction between a “public option” (i.e., a government insurance plan that would compete against private insurance companies) and so-called “co-op insurance providers,” which he will claim are private, not government, providers.  (Read his Jesuitical distinction here.)  The fact is, co-ops set up a disguised, backdoor takeover.  Co ops will be analogous to the other quasi-public companies, so-called “government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—a new FrannieMed—where the government-backed, government-subsidized system crowds out the private sector and then eventually goes belly up.  Government will then blame the “market” for failing and demand a full public takeover. 

This is the kind of cover Democrats in conservative districts, such as Boucher, require.   And here is where the U.S. Senate enters the Hand Jive.  With the assistance of a few clueless Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee (Grassley, Enzi and Snowe), Senate Democrats are preparing a bi-partisan “compromise” that provides the cover both for renegade Republicans who are desperate to vote for something and for Democrats like Boucher who find themselves between a rock and a hard spot.  According to recent press reports, the gang of six—three Democrats and the above three Republicans—wants to put lipstick on this pig by replacing a public option with co-ops and substituting a mandate that all individuals purchase healthcare for one that requires all employers to provide healthcare for their workers.  They will call it a great victory for “market-based” medicine and private industry; they will get the endorsement of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and AARP; they will promote it as “bipartisan; and they will demagogue anyone who opposes the “bipartisan compromise” as an “extremist.”

It is all a charade, a masquerade, an exercise in mass deception designed to slip a government takeover of healthcare past a skeptical and distrustful public.  All it would take to strip away the fig leaf and expose the “compromise” for the indecency it is would be for the Senate Republicans to blow the whistle.  Unfortunately, enough Senate Republicans appear to be in on the deal to justify calling it RINOcare, and it will prove to be a U.S. Chamber of Horrors.