Excel 【每日商业图表】 09-11-26 which to fix first

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So health reform could still falter. But as Mr Obama pointed out this week, nobody has got this far before.The bill Hillary Clinton drafted and sent to Congress 16 years ago was more or less dead on arrival.Though Mr Obama chose to leave it to Congress to write the legislation, he too has put health reform at the heart of his presidency. The very fact that he has staked so much is a strong reason for Democrats to sink their differences, lest they face a hammering next year like the one they got in the mid-terms of 1994, when the Clinton administration came up empty. They could certainly use some good news for voters after a dramatic jump in unemployment, to 10.2% in October from 9.8% in September. As if oncue, Bill Clinton himself visited the Senate this week to tell Democrats that a health bill was an economic imperative as well as a moral one. “It’s a big, complex, organic thing,” he said. “But the worst thing to do is nothing.” Really? Polls suggest that barely more than half, if that, of Americans see things that way. This week’s Economist/YouGov poll suggests that 52% support health reform, against 49% who oppose it (see chart). But the same poll finds that far more (41%) list the economy than health care (16%) as their main concern; and they worry about how Mr Obama is handling it. Gallup reported this week that more (36%) expected reform to damage their health care than to improve it (26%).

[此贴子已经被作者于2009-11-30 15:57:15编辑过]