Matt Wuerker, Politico, 2/12/10
Republicans in Congress complain that “we, the people” have not had enough time to consider the details of health policy reform…just two presidential primaries, a general election campaign in 2008 and 16 months since then. But that’s politics. Unfortunately, bad politics has consequences as the 2009-10 effort at expanding access and improving affordability has proven. The majority Democrats (with a 20- vote margin in the Senate and an 80-vote margin in the House) plus the White House have moved their proposals rightward (ideologically) to try and capture the middle ground…
To no avail. As the Republicans prepare for the president’s February 25 “Summit,” GOP House spokesman Mike Pence of Indiana, who would like to be a presidential candidate in 2012, says the GOP position will be to fight back against “government controlled health care.” So anything out of the majority in Congress will be “government run” because, I guess, Congress is “the government.” It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy in politics that you usually get what you wish for. So . . .
Ten Democratic senators – as of February 18 – have signed a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid demanding he offer a single-payer health reform plan. Let’s review where we have been and where health policy reform is headed in a polarized Congress/America: Three years ago, sensing that one of three candidates for president from the U.S. Senate will be president, Bob Bennett (R-UT) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) got together and agreed on a bipartisan reform bill which, by election campaign time in 2008, had 11 additional co-sponsors.
Shortly after Senator Obama (D-IL) won over Senator McCain (R-AZ) and was sworn in as president of all of us, he proposed principles for congressional policy reform. He then reached out to engage former colleagues Wyden, Bennett, Baucus (D-MT), Grassley (R-IA), Kennedy (D-MA) and Enzi (R-WY) in leadership for the effort. Bennett immediately got a more conservative GOP primary opponent for his 2010 race and Grassley was threatened with loss of his chairmanship (next year) of Judiciary. So Wyden lost his Bennett and we lost a chance at bipartisan reform.
Enzi engaged with a dying Kennedy and Chris Dodd (D-CT) in negotiating a bill in a committee (HELP) without a lot of “big picture” authority, and many, but not all, GOP ideas were incorporated into an eventual Senate bill. As were many Grassley ideas incorporated by Baucus in the “big picture” Finance Committee bill which eventually passed the Senate. According to GOP ideological rhetoric, all of this is “government-run health care.” New Minnesota Senator Al Franken has replaced Norm Coleman (one of the co-sponsors of the bipartisan Bennett-Wyden bill) and he signs on this week to the single payer plan.
Why would you ever want to be president and take on health policy reform?
Pity those of us who are trying to make heads out of tails.
The cost of this takeover is something we dont need right now. Health Care may seem broken but to have the Government involved in personal health care is just not the way to go.