Democrats playing doctor - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Democrats playing doctor - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: "As I'm writing this, they're in a panic in Congress, voting in the wee hours, bribing reluctant senators with millions in slush funds for their respective states, all to ram through a health reform bill that few if any of the lawmakers have even read, let alone intellectually reflected upon or debated.

They've already lost the public. In the most recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, support for the Democrats' health reform bills has dropped to 32 percent. In the latest CNN poll, the public is opposed to the Democrats' health reforms by a margin of nearly 2 to 1.

'Democrats are on a political suicide mission,' notes Megan McArdle, economics writer at The Atlantic magazine's blog. 'At this point, the thing is more than a little inexplicable,' McArdle asserts, speaking of the unpopularity of the legislation and the subsequent likelihood that Democrats will lose seats in both the House and Senate in next year's elections.

'No bill this large has ever passed on a straight party-line vote or even anything close to a straight party-line vote,' writes McArdle. 'No bill this unpopular has ever passed on a straight party-line vote.'

The Democrats' suicide mission is the result of their defining America's health care system as 'broken,' a system in such 'crisis' that nothing short of an immediate and complete overhaul is required -- a task, unfortunately, that's beyond the skill levels of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid."