Democrats health care 'conference'

Andrew Malcom:

Since it's basically one-party rule in Washington nowadays, Democratic leaders including Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are seriously considering pushing President Obama's beloved healthcare legislation through Congress without the normal conference committee work involving both party's members from both houses.

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And the president has stressed healthcare urgency for months; remember, he wanted all this done by the first week of August last year because he saw poll support dropping and wanted to avoid entanglement with the 2010 elections.

But here we are in 2010. And there are the elections just 305 days away.

A new Rassmussen Reports poll out Monday finds that a majority of Americans believe the new plans will hurt healthcare quality, 59% figure it will actually increase healthcare costs, 57% oppose the bills' intent to cut Medicare benefits by hundreds of billions of dollars and, for some reason, 78% of Americans suspect the Obama administration cost estimates are way under the actual expenses.

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The Democrats are on the wrong side of the voters on this legislation and they have no GOP cover. It is a bet your party kind of vote with long odds of voter acceptance. The passion has always been in opposition to this legislation and I don't think that ramming it through is going to make that passion lessen.