Negotiations have a life cycle about them, and they go through numerous phase changes throughout their duration.  The life cycle of any protracted negotiation always passes through at least one crisis point at which at least one of the parties threatens to walk away from the table or pivots away from the earlier framework of negotiations and attempts to alter the terms of debate. When all the parties behave this way, the negotiations enter a phase change. During a phase change, negotiations will frequently break down in order to pry the parties loose from entrenched positions, which if maintained would doom the effort to failure.

We are in the midst of such a phase change in the multiparty negotiations among the White House, the Congress, interest groups and the insurance, hospital and pharmaceutical industries over healthcare “reform.”  (Read the details here.)  Positions are hardening, previous partial deals are brought into question, and the negotiations are taking on the character of high drama played out in TV ads and media interviews, with accusations and threats flying every which way from Sunday talks shows.  All parties are threatening to pull out of deals they earlier cut with each other and blaming each other for acting in bad faith.

Anyone trying to figure out what is really going on inside these complicated negotiations is well advised to follow the recommendation of Nixon Attorney General John Mitchell to the media at the beginning of the Nixon presidency in 1969:  “Watch what they do, not what they say.”  Here is a sampling of what they are doing: 

AARP suddenly puts out a press release denying it had endorsed ObamaCare despite having previously allowed the unmistakable impression of its endorsement to linger for weeks in the public mind without correction.

·      The U.S. Chamber of Commerce begins running TV ads critical of components of ObamaCare that it previously had refrained from criticizing. 

·      The Chamber also sends a letter of encouragement to the congressional Committee negotiating a “bipartisan” compromise.” 

·      The White House suddenly ditches its description of ObamaCare as “healthcare” reform and begins to characterize it as “insurance” reform.

·      Republican Senator and Ranking Member of the Senate Finance Committee rejects the “public option” but endorses “co ops” if they are “done right.”

It is clear from the behavior of all parties to the negotiations they recognize that ObamaCare as originally conceived is dead.  Now they are trying to pivot toward a new conception of government-run healthcare that looks more like a “public-private partnership” (fascist) than nationalized (socialized) medicine, i.e., has more of a Republican look and feel about it.  And, there is suddenly talk of a “bipartisan compromise” in the air.  Talk of vouchers will be next.

At the same time, the pharmaceutical, insurance and hospital business interests, which early on had cut deals with the Obama Administration, are now maneuvering to provide themselves an exit strategy, a way to gracefully back away from their deals in case agreement on a “bipartisan compromise” cannot be reached and negotiations collapse for good.  After all, they only have to make good on the deals if the negotiations succeed. 

With his job as head of PhRMA now in serious jeopardy for botching the negotiations on the health bill, Billy Tauzin must be giving serious consideration to simply torpedoing the negotiations altogether.  The problem may be, however, that big-business interests have invested so much in their treacherous maneuverings against the American public that the negotiations may have taken on a life of their own and be very difficult for any one of the parties to blow up, despite the high dudgeon they appear to be in right now.  In fact, Big Pharma is leading a new coalition and spending considerable amounts of money to counteract the uprising of opposition to ObamaCare at the grass-roots.  (Read details here.)

Make no mistake about it though, the so-called “bipartisan compromise” toward which the negotiations are gravitating is no improvement on the original ObamaCare conception; it simply has a different skin on it and will operate differently toward the same end—government-controlled and government-run healthcare.  While the new configuration will sweeten the pot for the big-business interests who will end up acting as government agents/contractors in the scheme, it still would allow the government to call the shots behind the scenes and manipulate the players like sock puppets. 

ObamaCare-With-A-Republican-Feel—RHINOCare (Republican Healthcare in Name Only)—satisfies the primal urges of both government (more power) and big business (to cartelize their industries and drive out small competitors).  For example, any doubt that the aim of the big insurers is to create a cozy cartel with government protection is dispelled by this interview with the Obama OMB Health Czar Zeke Emanuel, brother of White House Chief of Staff Ron Emanuel.  According to Emanuel, an arrangement similar to the one the bipartisan cabal on Capitol Hill is cooking up would eliminate 95 percent of all health insurance companies currently operating in the United States.

Unless you are a party to the deal, which the America public is not, opponents of ObamaCare Ver. 1.0 won’t like ObamaCare Ver. 2.0 that is ready to be hatched bipartisan feathers and all.  The problem is, the Washington spin machines of the parties at the table will put out a fog of propaganda so thick it won’t be immediately apparent to average citizens that what they are being sold is simply a different flavored version of the same ObamaCare poison packaged in an attractive new vial. 

Therefore, it is more important now than ever that the grass-roots movement opposed to ObamaCare pivot quickly and get out in front in opposition to RHINOCare lest the professional propagandists in the White House, on Capitol Hill and scattered throughout corporate headquarters and their big-business trade associations turn their flank and roll up their rear before they know what has transpired.