Replies to post #162647 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[F6]

Can Romney prevail if few are excited about him?


After what was widely considered an unfocused and bloated campaign in 2008, the Republican former Massachusetts governor is returning to the presidential sweepstakes with a more tightly knit team that he hopes will keep him on point.

By Dan Balz, Published: December 3, 2011

Talk to any Republican leaders or strategists and they will quickly point to the enthusiasm gap between their voters and President Obama’s as one reason they believe they will prevail next November. Listen to any Republican voters and a different enthusiasm gap appears. They are not truly excited about any of their likeliest nominees, least of all Mitt Romney.

The former Massachusetts governor is rapidly becoming a one-man political experiment, testing the theory that empathy and the ability to connect with voters are prerequisites for a winning campaign. He has many attributes, but firing up a Republican crowd isn’t one of them.

The lone Republican candidate who once seemed to charge up Republican audiences was Herman Cain. But the businessman-politician was on a downward slide even before Saturday’s announcement that he would suspend his campaign. By the time of his announcement, Cain was a rear-view mirror candidate; Republican voters had moved on.

Romney’s predicament has been in neon lights this past week. A Time Magazine cover story by Joe Klein blares, “Why Don’t They Like Me?” A New York Times Magazine story by Robert Draper asserts that the Romney campaign has “taken a smart and highly qualified but largely colorless candidate and made him exquisitely one-dimensional: All-Business Man, the world’s most boring superhero.”

When Romney showed some emotion last week, it was not the kind that political experts would recommend. In an interview with Fox News anchor Bret Baier, he squirmed in his seat with discomfort and let his exasperation show over some tough but totally within-bounds questions about changes in his positions over the years. Baier later said that, after the interview, Romney upbraided him for being “overly aggressive.” So much for being a happy warrior.

On Thursday night, 12 Republican voters sat down with pollster Peter Hart for a focus group, one of a series being conducted for the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania during the election. When Romney advisers watch the video on C-SPAN, they should wince, though they no doubt have seen and heard the same thing in their own research for months.

Some of the participants offered positive appraisals of Romney as a man of good values and high morality. He was seen by a majority as fully experienced to be president — as was former House speaker Newt Gingrich. But the consistent theme that came through was that Romney was not one of them — not one of the 99 percent. Asked in a variety of ways to assess and analyze Romney’s character, the participants described him in terms that made him seem aloof, inauthentic and privileged.

Hart asked them, if Romney were a member of your family, who would he be? One said a second cousin, which is to say someone not considered close. Another said distant “because he’s richer than the rest of us.” Another said the “dad who’s never at home.” Another said Romney wouldn’t have time for his extended family.

Hart asked them to imagine each of the candidates standing sixth in line at the airport. There is one ticket available for the upcoming flight and the candidate needs to be on the plane. How would each of them manage to try to get to his destination? Of Romney, nearly everyone offered a variation of the same theme: He would buy his way onto the plane by paying off someone to get the ticket.

When they were asked which of the candidates they would ask to be their single character witness if they were unjustly accused of a crime, many more picked Michele Bachmann or Ron Paul than named Romney.

When they were asked which of the candidates they would most like to spend a weekend with, only two said Romney — one because he thought he would get a taste of Romney’s affluent lifestyle, the other because he opposes Romney right now and said he would want to ask him a lot of questions to decide whether he was right or wrong in his assessment.

“So it’s a pain weekend?” Hart said.

Romney’s advisers long ago digested the absence of love for Romney among Republican voters and constructed a campaign designed to win in spite of that problem rather than trying to do something about it.

Their theory is that voters are not looking for inspiration or empathy so much as they want someone with the experience to turn around the economy. They may believe, with some justification, that in a choice between Romney and Gingrich, Republican voters will see Romney as the safer and better bet.

They may turn to surrogates like New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to provide the charisma and excitement lacking in their candidate. Ultimately, they will sell Romney as the most electable candidate to the rank and file, who find little else to inspire them about him. But Romney’s challenge will be to make that sale more effectively than he’s done so far.

Republican leaders are counting on anti-Obama sentiment to keep the enthusiasm gap tilted in their favor next year, regardless of the limitations of their own nominee. Perhaps they are correct. But if they end up with a candidate that even many of their own voters see as not someone who walks among them and for whom they feel so little passion, that intensity gap may be perilously small.

© 2011 The Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/can-romney-prevail-if-few-are-excited-about-him/2011/12/03/gIQAhz0JPO_story.html [with comments]

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[StephanieVanbryce]

Great Recession still affects health care spending

Tony Pugh | McClatchy Newspapers Mon, Jan. 09, 2012

WASHINGTON — U.S. health are spending in 2010 grew at the second-slowest rate in 51 years, as patients continued to postpone hospitalizations, fill fewer drug prescriptions and avoid doctor visits in the aftermath of the Great Recession, according to a government report released Monday.

Because health care is considered a necessity, slowdowns in spending for medical services typically emerge some two years after an economic downturn. But high unemployment, the loss of job-based health coverage and plummeting household incomes caused national health spending to slow almost immediately after the Great Recession began in December 2007.



As insurers shift more costs to patients and more employers drop or cut health insurance offerings, the use of medical services continues to decline.

Public and private spending for health care totaled nearly $2.6 trillion in 2010, or $8,402 per person, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. That's up from nearly $2.5 trillion, or $8,149 per person, in 2009.

The 3.9 percent growth in spending was the second-smallest annual growth rate since the data was first tracked in 1960. Only 2009's 3.8 percent increase was smaller, said Anne Martin, an HHS economist.

Because gross domestic product and health care spending grew at similar rates in 2009 and 2010, the share of the GDP devoted to health care spending remained stable both years, at 17.9 percent.

Of every dollar spent on health care in America, private insurance pays about 33 cents, Medicare pays 20 cents, and state and federal Medicaid payments account for about 15 cents. Patient out-of-pocket payments account for about 12 cents, with the rest coming from a mix of third-party payers and various government programs.

Provisions of the 2010 Affordable Care Act had "minimal impact" on health spending that year, Martin said. That's because major provisions of the act, such as the expansion of Medicaid coverage for the poor and the creation of state health insurance exchanges, won't begin until 2014.

Retail prescription-drug spending — the third-largest share of health spending, behind hospital care and physician and clinical services — grew only 1.2 percent in 2010, the lowest annual growth rate ever.

Along with fewer drugs consumed, the continued use of cheaper generic medications and the loss of patent protection on certain brand-name drugs drove spending downward. In addition, fewer new drugs were introduced in 2010.

Premiums and benefit outlays for private health insurance, which includes job-based coverage and privately purchased coverage, both saw slower growth rates in 2010. The 1.6 percent growth in benefit payments for private coverage was the smallest increase ever recorded, as job losses continued to fuel enrollment declines.

In 2009, private insurance enrollment fell 2.9 percent as 5.7 million people lost coverage. Another 3.7 million lost coverage in 2010, producing a 1.9 percent decline in enrollment, Martin said.

Other findings from the report:

Medicare spending grew 5 percent in 2010, down from 7 percent in 2009. A slowdown in spending for Medicare managed-care programs triggered the decline.

Medicaid spending totaled $401.4 billion in 2010, up 7.2 percent from 2009.

Spending for home health care totaled $70.2 billion in 2010 and was one of the fastest-growing segments of the health care industry, growing 6.2 percent in 2010 and 7.5 percent in 2009.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/01/09/135311/great-recession-still-affects.html#storylink=cpy