In the Arena, At Last

Republican President Theodore Roosevelt once described what it is like to stick your neck out in the brutal world of political communications:

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man [...]

Health Care Expert Backs Public Option

Don’t want to overlook Lois Quam, quoted in yesterday’s StarTribune, supporting a public option for health insurance.
This is a big deal. Quam is smart — one of a handful of incredibly smart women in health care, including former state health commissioner Jan Malcolm, I had the privilege to meet when I did a little PR [...]

The Key To Public Support: Government-run Coverage

Pollster John Zogby recently found that public support for Senator Max Baucus’s health reform bill was at only about 29 percent. Ouch.
But interestingly, Zogby found the addition of two amendments would increase public support to the mid-50s. The amendments? Malpractice tort reform and a Medicare-like public insurance option to compete [...]

Scaredycrats Follow Pundits, Not Public

Republican political consultants like Frank Luntz have been telling health care reform opponents that Americans:
“…are deathly afraid that a government takeover will lower their quality of care – so they are extremely receptive to the anti-Washington approach. It’s not an economic issue. It’s a bureaucratic issue.”
But Luntz and his clients have a little [...]

“Public Option” = “Medicare”?

In the past, we’ve discussed the Obama Administration’s failure to use compelling labels to crystallize messages in the health reform detate. For example, the greatest political communicator of our times can’t seem to come up with a better brand name than “public option?”
Such as, oh let’s see now…“Medicare?”
While “public option” is a hopelessly flat [...]

War of the Words

Word up, words matter. In fact, words are often decisive. Case in point: The debate over inclusion of a “public option” in the proposed new national health insurance system.
When NBC pollsters asked citizens whether they supported “creating a public health care plan administered by the federal government that would compete directly [...]

Conservatives vs. Conservatives On A Public Option

In the national health reform debate about whether to give Americans the option of choosing a government run insurer over private insurers, the most formidable rebuttal to conservative messages is not being delivered by President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, liberal interest groups or any other public plan supporters.
The most formidable rebuttal of contemporary conservative [...]