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March 22, 2010
Obamacare's Achilles Heel
By Bruce Phillips
There is an important lesson to be learned about Obamacare, which passed the House last night. It was brought to national attention on February 7th, when President Obama sat down for a Super Bowl interview with Katie Couric. Among the many surprising things he said was this:


Look, I would have loved nothing better than to simply come up with some very elegant, you know, academically approved approach to health care. And didn't have any kinds of legislative fingerprints on it. And just go ahead and have that passed. But that's not how it works in our democracy. Unfortunately, what we end up having to do is to do a lot of negotiations with a lot of different people.


Translation: "There's a rational solution that would not require all this messy politics."


Having spent the better part of a decade as a management consultant, I recognized immediately that this view violates the cardinal rule of effective solutions. Here's how.


We often talked with our clients about the way a solution to their problem would be developed and implemented. We had experienced widespread misunderstanding as to both the key components of a solution and the concerns that must be addressed to ensure successful implementation. So we developed effective shorthand to deal with this important issue.


First, we would draw a graphic like the following.

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The final solution must lie in the intersection of these three components, meeting all three key components of successful solutions.


But as this was not widely understood or appreciated, we would ask the chief client this question: "If in the course of developing an on-time and under-budget solution to your company's problem we needed to de-emphasize one of these three components, which one would you prefer we select?"


The answer was almost always Political or Emotional. It was virtually never Rational. Can you hear President Obama giving the same answer above? And therein lies the Achilles Heel.


To problems in this world, there are many rational solutions. Complex modern issues have extensive "moving parts," all of which need attention. With the recognition that there exist an endless number of potential workable solutions, the idea that there is one and only one right one appears increasingly misguided. So, too, of course, is the idea that you could antiseptically analyze a problem and determine the right solution.


But whatever rational solution is ultimately selected, it will work only if the emotional and political needs of the organization are met. Humans will not cooperate in any solution to their problems if the solution itself creates or exacerbates emotional or political problems.


This brings to mind an old business school adage. "Venture capitalists would rather put their money behind a grade-B idea managed by a grade-A person than the other way around." This is just another way of saying that it's the process, the human component, that makes great events great.


And hence the Achilles Heel of Obamacare and the insight provided by his otherwise-offhand comments to Katie Couric. Obama clearly prefers the rational solution, and so much so that dealing with the political or emotional components is viewed as at best a necessary evil. To Obama, all this negotiating is wasted time.


This is firmly in the tradition of one strain of liberalism -- the idea that successful solutions can be dictated from above. These liberals believe that there is a ruling elite who is, or at least should be, tasked with taking care of the general populace. It is the general populace that is, according to the liberal mindset, incapable of assessing and correctly deciding issues on its own.


To the extent that liberalism ever strays off the "rational reservation," it is to wallow in the comforting swamps of emotion. "Feeling" that something is the right thing to do is enough. Compassion can justify any program. If it was intended to do good, it matters little what the actual outcome might be.


And so we deal with this bipolar aspect of liberalism. It is either rational in a way that does not understand or respect the complex reality of the human condition...or it is often driven by an emotional commitment that trumps serious analysis. It's a toxic mix.


And what will this misguided and easily avoided approach buy us? There will be legal challenges. There will be electoral reversals. There will be plummeting poll numbers. And there will be legislative battles over every bill that even remotely touches on this issue. It will be Roe v. Wade all over again -- a decision imposed on the American people which goes against their very closely held idea as to how these kinds of issues should be resolved.


As messy as it may seem to our coolly hyper-rational president, these immense issues need organic solutions -- solutions that grow up through trial and error. This doesn't mean that government has no role to play in encouraging and refereeing the game as it is played. But government simply cannot replace the game. Note that I do not say "should not." It's "cannot."


This is an amateur error. It has the potential to cause our body politic grief for decades. It didn't have to be this way.


Bruce Phillips is a financial advisor and recovering management consultant. He can be reached at <!-- e --><a href="mailto:phil8182@bellsouth.net">phil8182@bellsouth.net</a><!-- e -->.
American President Theodore Roosevelt ®, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (D), President Dwight David Eisenhower ®, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy (D),President Lyndon Baines Johnson (D),President Richard Milhouse Nixon ®, President Jimmy Carter (D), President William Jefferson Clinton ALL spoke about the critical need and/or made initiatives to give American citizens health care who lack it.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt began the work for health care for American with the passage of the Social Security Act in 1935. President Lyndon Baines Johnson carried this work further with the passage of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965.

Forty-five years later, President Barack Obama (D) has significantly achieved this goal with the passage of Health Care Reform signed into law this historic day of March 23, 2010.

IF President Obama is so fundamentally amateur (translation: dysfunctional) in what he has achieved in health care reform as this article titled "OBAMACARE'S ACHILLES TENDON" by Bruce Phillips asserts that ClassicalLib17 has posted, then how is it that President Obama has accomplished what no other American President has in nearly a century? As in 32 MILLION more Americans now eligible for health care as of 2014 with many other provisions to begin much earlier starting this year?

Those who CAN'T, criticize; those who CAN, do. Thank you, Mr. President, for being a DOER on this national issue that has shamed us for so long, making health care fairer, more accessible, more affordable while reducing our overall health care spending as a nation.

As for Mr. Phillip's thoughts, I say sounds like a whole lot of "SOUR GRAPES."


-- WT Reader
The writer of the above article, Bruce Phillips, completely missed the meaning and context of the two sentences he quoted. Obama was simply saying that is how our democracy works. The same would apply to liberal or conservative. When Mr. Phillips paraphrased the statement in his "translation" he, for unknown reasons, maybe he's just plain stupid, completely change it's intended meaning. Obama never implied that there was a rational solution. He actually implied the opposite, that there was not a rational solution. Such people as Mr. Phillips are never to be trusted.
[Image: j114cn.jpg]

My translation = Obama didn't want to repeat Clinton's mistake of drafting legislation and submitting it to congress for approval. Instead he let the legislative branch do its job. Its the more tedious,unpredictable and messy way, but it's the way our government is naturally organized.
Bruce Phillips was 100% wrong. He said, in his translation, that Obama implied that "there's rational solution" to health care.
Obama never implied that. Where and how did Obama imply that a "rational solution" actually did exist? Obama's statement was framed in the context of conjecture.
Pure spin on the part of Mr. Phillips. gmg77, you are certainly correct in putting him outside the realm of rationality... I'd put him off the charts completely.