The White House hasn’t ruled out paring down the health care bill into smaller pieces, but during his jobs even in Ohio today, President Obama emphasized that the health care reform provisions are interconnected and suggested that they could not effectively reduce costs or increase access as separate pieces of legislation. “A lot of these insurance reforms are connected to some other things we have to do to make sure everyone has some access to coverage,” he said.

Obama admitted that “the process” of passing health care reform “has been less than pretty” but stressed that “when you deal with 535 members of Congress, it’s gonna be a somewhat ugly process.” “When you put it all together it just starts looking like this monstrosity and it makes people fearful and it makes people afraid,” he said:

There are things that have to get done. This is our best chance to do it. We can’t keep on putting this off….The point is this, none of the big issues that we face in this country are simple. Everybody wants to act like they’re simple. Everyone wants to say that they can be done easily, but they’re complicated, they’re tough. The health care system is a big, complicated system and doing it right is hard…We can’t sort of start saying to ourselves America or Congress can’t do big things, that we should only do the things that are noncontroversial. We should only do the stuff that’s safe. Because if that’s what happens then we’re not going to meet the challenges of the 21st century. And that’s not who we are. That’s not how we used to operate and that’s not how I intend us to operate going forward.

Watch it:

“Nearly four dozen health care experts” have sent a letter to Congress urging the House to adopt the Senate bill and a separate reconciliation package. The experts criticized proposals to slim down reform. “From the perspective of both politics and policy, we do not believe that this is a feasible option,” they wrote. “Indeed we doubt that any bill would reach the President’s desk should congressional leaders pursue this misguided course.”

In the Battle of Waterloo, Democrats are prepared to surrender. After Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) issued his battle cry to the Democrats in August, President Obama aptly responded by noting “this isn’t about me,” but rather, it’s about “a health care system that is breaking America’s families.” “We can’t afford the politics of delay and defeat when it comes to health care — not this time, not now,” Obama added. But today, Democrats — just inches from the goal-line — are indeed prepared to take a knee, run out the clock, and renege on their promise of seeing health care reform through completion.

Learning the wrong lessons from a Massachusetts election, Democrats are finding difficulty motivating their solid majorities in the House and Senate to finish what they started. The outcome in Massachusetts didn’t change the basic fundamental questions: Can we afford the status quo, and is the current reform bill better than doing nothing at all?

Last year, Senate and House Democrats pledged to fix the broken health care system and put the nation on a sustainable economic path by repeatedly voting for change. If they’re still committed to that goal, then passing the Senate health care bill alongside a reconciliation package to improve the underlining legislation and address popular concerns is the only way to achieve the change voters demanded in 2008.

Trying to pass a scaled-back version of reform would drag out the process, fail to substantially lower costs or improve access, and do so without any assurance that it will be any more popular in Congress. Democrats therefore have two choices: pass an improved version of the Senate health care bill or abandon the effort altogether. If Democrats chose the latter, millions more Americans would go without health care and health care costs would continue to skyrocket. Politically, the Democratic Party will be ridiculed for talking a big game but delivering no results. They will lose their progressive base and outsource their agenda to the Republican minority — all simply because their supermajority of 60 shrank to 59.

Democrats are hesitant to vote again for an unpopular health care bill. They fear that the Massachusetts elections are a bellwether of the upcoming midterms. Change of the magnitude envisioned by health care reformers certainly does not come easily. As President Obama said in March, “To kick these problems down the road for another four years or another eight years would be to continue the same irresponsibility that led us to this point. That’s not why I ran for this office. I didn’t come here to pass on our problems to the next President or the next generation — I came here to solve them.”

The Democrats have an opportunity to improve health care for millions of Americans. They will regret squandering this moment if they cannot regroup now.

Update

Tom Toles provides this illustration:

A new poll finds that when Americans shift through the misinformation and politics of health care reform, they actually like what they see. According to January’s Kaiser Health Tracking Poll, conducted before the Massachusetts Senate vote, 42% support health care reform, while 41% oppose it. “However, a different and more positive picture emerged when we examined the public’s awareness of, and reactions to, major provisions included in the bills. Majorities reported feeling more favorable toward the proposed legislation after learning about many of the key elements, with the notable exceptions of the individual mandate and the overall price tag.” Some elements of the legislation “were popular enough to prompt a majority of skeptics to soften their opposition“:

- 62% of current opponents said including the tax credits for small businesses made them supportive of reform.

- 59% of current opponents said the fact that most people’s existing insurance arrangements would not change made them more supportive of reform.

- 55% of current opponents said if there was a stipulation that no federal money would go to abortion they would be more supportive of reform.

The poll also found that 17 of 27 different provisions made respondents feel more positively about the bills, including the exchanges, the new insurance regulations, and closing the Medicare “doughnut hole.” All this suggests that the public is fed up with the process and politics of health care reform, but they’re supportive of what Democrats are actually trying to accomplish. Which brings us back to the argument that Democrats are seriously misreading the Massachusetts election results.

On Tuesday, Massachusetts voters elected a Republican candidate who defended a reform bill that’s very similar to what the House and Senate Democrats have supported. Far from suggesting that health care reform would lose elections, the Massachusetts results actually suggest that when Americans see the benefit of health care reform, they tend to politically reward the candidate who vows to protect it.