Obama on health care: Flight or fight?
By Eugene Robinson
WashPost
Friday, January 22, 2010
If President Obama has decided to give up on health-care reform, he should just come out and say so. Then we could all get on with our lives -- those of us with health insurance, that is. But I don't see how his talk about some sort of slimmed-down package, reduced to its "core elements," could possibly inspire Democrats in Congress to do anything but run for the hills.
Republican Scott Brown's victory Tuesday in Massachusetts, grabbing the Senate seat that was held for decades by the late Ted Kennedy, left Democrats rattled. Actually, frantic would be a better word. Thus far, Obama has said nothing that would help calm the waters -- or help the party get out of what now can officially be called the Health Care Mess. If anything, Obama is making it messier.
In an interview Wednesday with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, Obama said this about health care: "I would advise that we try to move quickly to coalesce around those elements of the package that people agree on." He said that we have to keep insurance companies from "taking advantage of people," that we have to contain costs, and that we have to give small businesses help to provide health insurance to their employees.
That's all well and good. But there is already a measure on the table that would do these things -- the bill passed on Christmas Eve by the Senate. Now that the Democrats no longer have a filibuster-proof majority, it is all but inconceivable that the Senate could produce a new bill with all those elements. And it's not possible to do health-care reform a la carte.
(More here.)
WashPost
Friday, January 22, 2010
If President Obama has decided to give up on health-care reform, he should just come out and say so. Then we could all get on with our lives -- those of us with health insurance, that is. But I don't see how his talk about some sort of slimmed-down package, reduced to its "core elements," could possibly inspire Democrats in Congress to do anything but run for the hills.
Republican Scott Brown's victory Tuesday in Massachusetts, grabbing the Senate seat that was held for decades by the late Ted Kennedy, left Democrats rattled. Actually, frantic would be a better word. Thus far, Obama has said nothing that would help calm the waters -- or help the party get out of what now can officially be called the Health Care Mess. If anything, Obama is making it messier.
In an interview Wednesday with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, Obama said this about health care: "I would advise that we try to move quickly to coalesce around those elements of the package that people agree on." He said that we have to keep insurance companies from "taking advantage of people," that we have to contain costs, and that we have to give small businesses help to provide health insurance to their employees.
That's all well and good. But there is already a measure on the table that would do these things -- the bill passed on Christmas Eve by the Senate. Now that the Democrats no longer have a filibuster-proof majority, it is all but inconceivable that the Senate could produce a new bill with all those elements. And it's not possible to do health-care reform a la carte.
(More here.)
Powered by Blogger
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home