My blood runs cold...

by: Riley Murray

Tue Jul 07, 2009 at 10:03:13 PM EDT

cross-posted: Blue Commonwealth, Blue Ridge Data

My blood runs cold
My memory has just been sold
My angel is the centerfold
Angel is the centerfold
from Centerfold, 1982, J. Giles Band

Cold Data Reality. My idealized image of health care reform seems to have been sold to the highest bidder.

Obama in the WH, Democrats with a formidable majority in Congress, this time ... real health care reform is highly probable event ... right? Well maybe not.

Money talks and progressive wishes walk.

Riley Murray :: My blood runs cold...

The gathering battle over health care reform has some statistically dissonant aspects. While public polling data shows strong support for a public option, political insider intelligence indicates that Congressional committee work is shying away from support of the public option.

Some recent data analysis by Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com tells the story-behind-the-story.

Special Interest Money Means Longer Odds for Public Option

This is less about GOP intransigence, it is more about the power of money.

"... health care is one of those areas where both popular opinion and sound public policy seem to take a backseat to protecting those stakeholders who benefit from the status quo. But can we actually see -- statistically -- the impact of lobbying by the insurance industry on the prospects for health care reform? I believe that the answer is yes."
"The model employed is a standard logistic regression with these three variables: ideology, lobbying and health care costs. Ideology is statistically significant at the 99th percent level, PAC contributions at the 95th percent level, and health care costs -- senators in states with more health care spending are more likely to support the public option -- at the 90th percent level. The R-squared for the model is .61, which means that these three variables alone give us 61 percent of the information that we need to predict a senator's position on the public option. The model guessed the senator's position correctly in 87 out of 99 instances."
[...]
In other words, the insurance industry's influence appears to swing about 9 votes against the public option. Whatever number of senators wind up supporting the public option, add 9 to it, and you'll have a decent ballpark estimate for what the level of support might be if not for insurance industry contributions. Note, however, that we haven't attempted to model the impact of contributions from other interest groups, including both pro-health reform organizations such as labor unions or other stakeholders like pharmaceutical companies.

Politics is all about influence and persuasion. Money speaks loudly. It will take a much more powerful grassroots effort to sway moderate Democrats in Congress. Public opinion polls are not enough. Coming after the exciting Democratic victories in 2008, this is a reality check of how things work in the real world of Congressional politics.