The GOP can't lose what they never had
The GOP can't lose what they never had - public confidence that they understand the problems real people experience accessing and affording health care. The current party comes from parts of the country where medical practice culture is oriented around “more is better” and the doctor is always right, individuals need to take more responsibility for their choices, abortion and euthanasia are not cost containment but liberal values, and the problem lies elsewhere than with me or us (people like me).
Democrats believe that access to health care is a right, that private and for-profit institutions are less likely than public and some nonprofit to guarantee access and care quality and contain cost increases. They believe the success of programs such as Medicare or the VA health system prove that health care is not a commodity but a social good, the right to which is a public necessity and a public responsibility. Democrats represent older, more populous parts of the country which are more attractive to immigrants and low-income persons from Republican parts of the country because of a long tradition of health and social services.
Starting with something like this, you can add your own observations of the two sides represented at the health care town hall meetings across America this past August. Then ask yourself, who is representing the millions of families we all know whose behavioral, mental, disability and medical problems are such that they haven't ever had a consistently confident experience with any institutional or professional resources regardless of where they live in America? Their problems are often compounded by family, education, economic situations and bad relationships, threat of crime, addictions, etc.
The rising cost of medical care ($2.9 trillion this year) in a pluralistic system is a greater threat than Obama care today. Ours is a system in which everyone has choices, few have good information, and no one has any notion of what's quality care nor a "health home" they can count on to be there for them.
So a GOP congresswoman from Minnesota can call for "a covenant, slit our wrists, be blood brothers" to stop any Democratic health reform. And an equally naíve (not the word I'd like to use) Catholic Bishop from Sioux City, Iowa, can argue “the Catholic Church does not teach that government should directly provide health care. Preserving patient choice (through a flourishing private sector) is the only way to prevent a health care monopoly from denying care arbitrarily, as we learned from HMOs in the recent past.”