Increasingly in Washington over the last few weeks, we have heard this assessment of the president\u2019s health care upheaval prospects: Something will pass, because the president and his party have such large majorities (nearly 60 percent) in both chambers of Congress that it is inconceivable that they could not bludgeon their way to the necessary majorities. \u00a0But victory will be the product of power, not debate \u2013 and it will cost them control of the House in the next election.<\/p>\n
The problem for the president is that he has lost the health care debate. \u00a0No one in either party or in the media has dared speak this fact as of now, but it is inescapable.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s review the bidding:<\/p>\n
“[Recently] a group of senior doctors and health-care experts wrote to a national newspaper expressing their concern about the Liverpool Care Pathway, a palliative program being rolled out across the NHS involving the withdrawal of fluids and nourishment for patients thought to be dying. Noting that in 2007-08, 16.5% of deaths in the U.K. came after “terminal sedation,” their letter concluded with the chilling observation that experienced doctors know that sometimes “when all but essential drugs are stopped, ‘dying’ patients get better\u201d if they are allowed to.”<\/p>\n
Darwall was pointing out what everyone except the president\u2019s policy experts seems to understand: None of us knows which year is our last year of life until we actually die. \u00a0The rationing policies at the heart of the president\u2019s money saving plan will inevitably lead to government panels setting standards for the entire population. \u00a0But not everyone \u2013 actually, not most of us \u2013 will fit those standards. \u00a0With genetics driving medicine towards highly individualized care at all levels, the president\u2019s upheaval plans will drive the nation to care by the averages, or, as one former senior Food and Drug Administration official called it in a talk with me recently, a lurching back to the Middle Ages of treatment.<\/p>\n
On point after point, the president has been on the short end of the health care argument. Facts have got in his way so often as to raise doubts about whether the White House even has a fact checking staff.<\/p>\n