538.com: Rumors of the Demise of ObamaCare Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

[backscatter712]

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/07/rumors-of-demise-of-obamacare-have-been.html

The beltway consesnsus seems to be that the Democrats' prospects of passing meaningful health insurance reform this year have become much slimmer, if they haven't already entirely evaporated. Like Ezra Klein, however, I'm not really sure what everyone was expecting. There is a lot of money -- and political capital -- at stake here. Were opponents of health care reform going to roll over and play dead? Has anything proceeded that differently from how we might have expected it to proceed ahead of time?

Over at Intrade, the bettors currently assign a 43 percent chance that a health care bill with a public option will be passed by the end of the year. There is no market, unfortunately, on the prospects for passage of a bill without a public option (something which could still happen under any number of scenarios). What's interesting about this contract, though, is that it's not particularly higher or lower than it has ever been. Sure, health care has had a bit of a rough go of things of late, but perhaps not a particularly rougher go than we should have been "pricing in" to our expectations:

I had argued previously that Obama should have done more to frame the debate and put a particular health care bill in front of Congress, rather than letting Congress handle it themselves. Maybe health care would be in a little bit better shape right now if he had done that and maybe it wouldn't; we'll never really be able to test the counterfactual. But because he didn't do that, Obama still has most of his tactical flexibility intact. And there are at least four scenarios under which health care reform could still pass this year:

...

I'm not about to go out on a limb with some sort of prediction that health care is going to pass this year. It could very easily fail. But it's not going to fail without the White House fighting like mad for it, and with most or all of its options being exhausted. The fundamental weakness of the White House press corps is that they can rarely see beyond the current 24-hour news cycle -- there are still a lot of news cycles ahead before ObamaCare can be put to rest.

[uponit7771]

1. MsM attempt at group think IMHO....

[lumberjack_jeff]

2. Psy-ops.

A very good bill is going to pass the house. I give 60:40 odds that a pretty good bill will pass the senate.

[backscatter712]

3. My Mythbusters-style prediction of what's going to happen:

50% says we get a halfway-decent public-option health care bill passed that bears resemblance to the Tri-Committee House Bill.

20% says we get a severely watered-down bill, say with a trigger, or with public-option stripped out entirely, meaning the nation gets Romney-care - individual and employer mandates, bans on excluding pre-existing conditions, ban on unfair rescissions, maybe required community-rating, but little to actually control costs.

30% says Congress gets in a huge pissing contest, Blue Cross Dems dig in their heels and join the GOP filibuster, and nothing gets done at all.

[boppers]

6. Intrade.

You *can* bet on those odds, if you wish, it's about 40:60 right now...

http://data.intrade.com/graphing/jsp/closingPricesForm.jsp?contractId=683800&tradeURL=https://www.intrade.com

[FatDave]

4. I was just thinking something kind of like this yesterday.

Obama has really only recently started playing his hand. Reid has done nothing to rein in senate dems (but then that could just be Good Ol' Harry keeping the powder dry). But seems like there is still a lot of power Obama has in his back pocket ready to be wielded.

My favorite scenario is the first one Silver mentioned. Obama and the DNC need to round up the stragglers and say "Listen, motherfucker, this is the democratic agenda. Get the fuck on board or we're going to find you a primary challenger--maybe one who's just as conservative as you on the other issues, you blue dog fuck--and we're gonna fund the shit out of him/her." (Sounds like Rahm's doing the talking in my description)

And apart from Obama and the DNC, Doesn't Dick Durbin have a bit of muscle as Majority Whip that's going unflexed?

The way I see it, we're reasonably close already. There's a few hold-outs, but there's still a lot of ways to bring them on board.

[ChimpersMcSmirkers]

5. Underestimating Obama is not a smart more.