Pollsters on Drugs

I never much liked political operatives and seeing James Carville on TV usually sends me lurching for the clicker. But with President Bush's approval ratings slipping below 40 percent in the latest Gallup Poll, all the signs are pointing toward a classic correction. The midterm elections in the second term of a two-term presidency almost always result in a major turning out of incumbents. So I was curious about Carville's data in his latest poll, which landed in my in-box today.

The former Clinton braintrust (Carville works with Stanley Greenberg and Robert Shrum in an outfit called Democracy Corps) reports the country is "ready for a political upheaval in 2006." But the Democrats, they warn, are "underperforming."

That's putting it mildly. Over the past year, support among the electorate for Republicans slipped from 53 to 48 percent, according to their poll. But support for Democrats fell by the same five points landing at 49 percent. "Both national parties are at a half-century low point in public esteem," they noted.

Okay, so what will it take for the public to turn out enough Republicans to create a Democratic Congress next year? Carville and company ran a number of "attack" lines by their sample voters. Ranking right up near the top of the list of things that angered voters was Republicans giving drug companies the right to raise prices for seniors and barring Medicare from negotiating a better deal.

Sound familiar? This line of attack was typical of their other ideas that polled well. Attack oil companies, score points. Attack Bush's effort to privatize Social Security, score more points. Indeed, virtually all the talking points on their list could have been lifted from political ads run in 2004, 2002 or even 2000.

Well, one doesn't have to be a political specialist to know that the Social Security debate went nowhere this year and no one will be talking about it next year. Likewise, oil prices may be an issue -- or not. If I were running for office next year as a Democrat, I don't know that I'd want to pin my hopes on high oil prices and a recession.

And as someone who has followed the drug issue pretty closely the past few years, I can say with some certainty that this is not going to be an issue next year. Why? The Medicare drug benefit is going to have its intended effect of making drug prices a non-issue for most seniors. In the long run it is nothing more than a massive giveaway to the drug industry. Indeed, within a decade, most seniors will be paying as much or more for drugs as they're paying now and that's on top of the $100 billion a year the feds will be chipping in.

But in the short run, most seniors are going to be paying less because Medicare will be picking up some of the tab. Every senior with income at 150 percent of the poverty level or less -- and that's about one-third of the elderly population -- will have their drug bills reduced to a minor monthly co-pay. Anyone with annual drug bills less than $2,500 will see their out-of-pocket payments reduced to well under $1,000. And people with catastrophic drug bills will get substantial relief.

There will be tons of confusion as seniors are forced to choose among drug plans and the media will have a field day this winter as the program stumbles in its efforts to get off the ground. But by next spring, the issue will be gone -- as it was last year after the Republican Congress stayed up late one night twisting arms to get it passed so it wouldn't be an issue in the presidential race.

Carville and company are so wrapped up in their old way of thinking about issues (poll on it; if it taps a nerve, make a commercial about it) that they can't see the coming catastrophe. The drug bill is symptomatic of a much larger problem: we have an out-of-control health care system that is threatening to bankrupt the entire economy.

Democrats need to start talking about that. Their problem, though, is that the solution -- some variation of national health insurance with either price controls or caps on expenditure growth -- is considered a political non-starter by the high-paid consultants peddling the usual Democratic nostrums.

So the conversation about meaningful reform can never begin. A political constituency is never built. And change never comes.

Posted by gooznews at October 17, 2005 11:06 PM