The politics of healthcare reform are simply amazing.
Over 3/4s of Americans are reasonably satisfied with their healthcare insurance and the healthcare they receive — and they expect taxes to go up, insurance premiums to go up, and healthcare to get worse with longer waits and more denied services.
Still, the Senate passed — on a straight party line vote — a law that roughly 2 out of 3 Americans oppose.
Now they — the Democrats in general and Pres. Obama specifically — “own” the healthcare system. Rightly or wrongly, every premium increase, every delayed doctor’s appointment, every service denied, etc., will be chalked up to ObamaCare. Turnabout is fair play !
* * * * *
Excerpted from RCP: Democrats Risk Another Jacksonian Moment, December 21, 2009
Democratic leaders are courting disaster with this health care bill. With it, they’ve moved their questionable wheelings and dealings from the margins to the center of American life. Consider some of the special deals:
– Nebraska, Louisiana, Vermont and Massachusetts are getting more federal help with Medicaid than other states. In the case of Nebraska — represented by Sen. Ben Nelson, who’s providing the critical 60th vote for the legislation to pass — the federal government is picking up 100 percent of the tab of a planned expansion of the program, in perpetuity.
– Florida’s beneficiaries of Medicare Advantage plans — the private managed-care plans within Medicare — will have their benefits grandfathered in thanks to a provision tailored by Sen. Bill Nelson.
– Longshoremen were added to the list of workers in high-risk professions who are shielded from the full impact of a proposed new tax on high-value insurance plans.
We might be on the verge of another Jacksonian moment: a time when the people awake from their slumber, angrily exercise their sovereign authority, and mercilessly fire the leaders who have for too long catered to the elites rather than average people.
In true Jacksonian fashion, the country fired the Republicans in 2006 and 2008 because they bungled the war in Iraq and allowed the economy to sink into recession.
The people might soon have another Jacksonian moment, and fire these equally useless Democrats for hampering the recovery, exploding the deficit, and playing politics with health care.
The fact that the President can’t find a single Republican vote out of more than 200 potential supporters is a strong indication that this is a bad bill.
Ben Nelson sits in the middle of the Senate. He could be a Democrat or a Republican. If he were a Republican, but everything else about him were the same, would he have voted for this? Of course not. That should tell you everything you need to know about this bill: partisanship and pay-offs.
Full article:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/horseraceblog/2009/12/democrats_risk_another_jackson_1.html
The Homa Files 
Leave a comment