By Evan Falchuk
EXCITEMENT, that’s what.
It’s true. Here she is yesterday:
You’ve heard about the controversies within the bill, the process about the bill, one or the other. But I don’t know if you have heard that it is legislation for the future, not just about health care for America, but about a healthier America, where preventive care is not something that you have to pay a deductible for or out of pocket. Prevention, prevention, prevention—it’s about diet, not diabetes. It’s going to be very, very exciting.
This is just like how I felt as a kid waiting for Empire Strikes Back to come out.
To be fair, it sounds like she’s heard about some of the new trends in employee benefits. That’s good because a reform plan that looked more like what successful companies are doing would be helpful. The trouble is that the bills trying to be reconciled in Congress are not about “prevention, prevention, prevention.” They’re about a whole huge collection of other stuff, none of which can really be collected under a simple theme. It’s one of the many reasons why reform is going so badly.
Ruling: Not Exciting.
Maybe you can get excited about this other idea she has: jobs.
In her speech yesterday she repeated what I thought was a mistaken, off-the-cuff remark she made at the health care reform summit a couple of weeks ago:
Health insurance reform is about jobs. This legislation alone will create 4 million jobs, about 400,000 jobs very soon.
I guess she meant it. In which case, I’m reminded of former Secretary of State James Baker who, back in 1991, gave a speech about the impending Gulf War. Describing the reason for the war, which was getting started in the midst of a recession, he said: “If you want to sum it up in one word, it’s jobs.”
Is there a “Politics for Dummies” book that says that when you need a simple explanation for something complicated you should just say “jobs”? I bet the chapter is called something like “San Dimas High School Football Rules!”
Still, how believable are these numbers? Four million jobs is a huge number. How big? Big enough enough to drop our unemployment from 10% to 7%. It would be like creating 40 companies the size of Microsoft, or 80,000 companies with 50 employees each. Maybe she’s talking about all the lawyers and consultants that will be needed to understand and implement whatever might pass Congress. I could see those jobs being created “very soon” and there being lots of them.
Of course the line that is getting the most attention is this one:
But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy.
I actually give Ms. Pelosi a pass on this one. The controversy on both sides, the botched sales pitches, the complicated collection of changes, all make it very difficult for ordinary people to understand what is going on.
If people really knew what was in the bills they would say, all of this effort, for this?
