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Gov. Schwarzenegger (R-CA) and Gov. Patterson (D-NY)

Just because every Democrat in the Senate voted to pass their health care bill doesn’t mean that states with a majority of Democratic voters support it. In fact, the Governors of California and New York (the two largest Democratic states) are strongly against the measure, saying it will put their already near-bankrupt economies over the edge (read the full article from Politico.com here). To be specific, Governor David Patterson (D-NY) said, “[I] am deeply troubled that the Senate version of the bill worsens what was already an inequitable situation for New York and I will continue to be an advocate on behalf of New Yorkers to ensure we are treated fairly by this critical federal legislation,” and Gov. Schwarzenegger wrote “When asked for my support, I was assured that federal legislation would not increase costs to California or include new unfunded mandates,…Unfortunately, under nearly every scenario we can predict, the federal health care reform legislation being debated would cost California’s General Fund an additional $3 billion to $4 billion annually.” Wow, these are strong words, and I have to assume that if these two states see further economic problems arising from this new health care legislation (as I predicted in my last article, Our nation must have been naughty this year), that they are not the only ones.

To further complicate the matter, as I’ve been reporting all along, American voters still do not support the new health care legislation that has been proposed. The numbers released from Rasmussen Reports on 12/30/09 show that 58% of U.S. voters are opposed to the bill, while only 39% support it (read the full story here). To underscore this number further, of the 58% that oppose it, 46% strongly oppose it, but of the 39% that favor it, or 19% strongly favor it.

Another interesting component to this health care vote that I brought up in my article Do our Representatives care what we think?, is the fact that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was trailing by significant margins in every re-election poll run (regardless of which GOP candidate emerged from the primaries to run against him). Many people believe that his push for this version of health care reform is to blame for his new-found unpopularity in his state, and it looks like this may be the beginning of trend of backlash against representatives who don’t listen to their constituency. Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska was the last Democrat holdout on the Senate bill until a provision was added to exclude Nebraska from having to contribute funds to the new Medicaid expansion that is included in the bill. You’d think the people of Nebraska would be thanking him for getting them the best deal of any of the 50 states, until you remember one fact. The voters of Nebraska oppose the new legislation at an even higher rate than the nation (64% oppose in Nebraska vs. 58% nationwide, and 53% strongly oppose in Nebraska vs. 46% nationwide), and Sen. Ben Nelson just wasn’t listening. He refused to  break ranks with the rest of his party, even though that’s what the people that elected him wanted, and instead put up a stink for a while, and got them a special concession, and thought that would make everything OK. In other times that might have been true, but voters around the country are “on alert” right now, and the voters of Nebraska saw right through Sen. Nelson’s smokescreen, and the proof is the poll numbers. In a poll released on 12/29/09, if Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman were to run against Sen. Nelson in 2012 he would receive 61% of the vote and Sen. Nelson would receive 30% (read the full story at Rasmussen Reports). That’s a great example of letting your vote speak for you, and a 31 point deficit in the polls speaks very loudly.

So, just like all of my other health care articles lately, we are left with the same conundrum. The majority of American voters do not support this version of health care reform. As Gov. Patterson and Gov. Schwarzenegger have pointed out, it will not reduce or even maintain costs for states, and as I have tried to repeatedly point out in previous articles, it will not reduce costs for the average American who already has health care (which was one of the original selling points). It will add additional burdens to businesses, and probably lead to increased taxes or insurance premiums for individuals (during a recession). The Senators and Representatives who vote for this bill are in danger of being voted out the very next time they run, according to many polls. Yet, even with all of this on the table, this legislation rolls on, with a seeming inevitability of being passed and signed into law, and the question I keep asking is, why? To this point, I have yet to receive a good answer.

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