That “broad agreement” on health reform announced by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has one especially striking feature. It isn’t very broad. In fact, it’s breathtakingly narrow. As my colleague William Kristol noted, it lacks the 60 votes needed to pass the Senate. That means Reid can’t get 60 Democrats and he still lacks the support of a single Republican, including Olympia Snowe of Maine, who has often voted for Democratic proposals in the past. This time, however, she’s been moving away from ObamaCare for reasons outlined in a Senate floor speech last month. But what the Reid scheme lacks most is public support. How can the agreement be broad if the majority of Americans aren’t on board? And they aren’t. Quite the contrary, the public in after poll after poll in recent months has registered increasing opposition to liberal health care reform in any of its Senate or House formulations. And the anti-ObamaCare majority opposition includes not just Republicans and a chunk of Democrats but a lopsided majority of independents. The new “broad” agreement is more likely to strengthen public disapproval than reduce it. A couple of new twists in the Reid approach won’t do the trick. Gimmicks won’t help at this stage of the health care debate. One is designed to attract senators who don’t want a government-run health insurance program (the “public option”). Okay, then have the government get the private sector to set up several national, non-profit, supposedly low-cost insurance plans that anyone could buy. If this sounds complicated, that’s because it is. And it’s not a big change from the public option. Worse, it makes little sense. To have a flowering of competition among inexpensive national plans, all Congress needs do is lift the ban on buying health insurance across state lines, just as is the case with auto, life, and every other type of insurance. That would be the simple approach. Another twist would make those between 55 and 64 eligible for Medicare. But wait a minute! I thought the idea in ObamaCare was to cut Medicare spending as part of bending the health care cost curve. That’s why Democrats have insisted on hundreds of millions of cuts in the same bill. Now they would spend more on Medicare. I wish they’d make up their mind.
