Obamacare back to Square One?

Good story in POLITICO by former Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Carrie Budoff Brown about the unraveling of Obamacare.

From Budoff Brown's story:

At the start of the year, Democrats were convinced they’d finally cracked the code.

They’d spent years testing and refining their message on health care reform. They had a popular president to push the effort, and Democratic majorities in Congress to support it. The public seemed receptive to big changes.

Eight months later, the effort is in serious trouble. The White House is almost back to Square One, struggling to break through with a message that has undergone several major course-corrections and on the defensive against wild charges that caught Democrats off-guard.

What went wrong? Bearing the brunt of some of the criticism is Obama himself — once viewed as a sure-fire closer, now facing grumbling on the left for letting critical months slip by without a constant, coherent and consistent argument. Think “change” and “hope” from the campaign, catchwords that Obama practically trademarked. In this fight, his key messages have shifted, from fixing health care to fix the economy, to “stability and security” for people who already have insurance.

And this week, he returned to an argument Democratic strategists said shouldn't be part of the pitch this year — trying to convince Americans they have a “moral obligation” to help people without insurance, a discredited argument from the reform effort under President Bill Clinton.

Read the full story, "White House health plan back to Square One," at POLITICO