Best Blogs
If You Like Bureaucracy And Red Tape, Then You’ll Love The Health Care Bill
Richard Sherwood and Vivek Rajasekhar
Heritage Foundation's Foundry Blog, 01/27/10
Time and time again, congressional leaders have denied that the proposed health care legislation would result in a federal takeover of health care. Proponents of Obamacare claim that consumers would retain personal choice in selecting health plans and physicians...The President and Congressional leaders fail to mention that, under the House and Senate bills, the federal government would determine the kind of health plans Americans get— the kinds of insurance Americans would get, the level of coverage they can receive, and the premiums, co-payments and taxes they would pay. It even mandates that all individuals purchase a government-defined level of health insurance coverage, regardless of their personal wants or needs. Read more...
Daschle Handicaps the Final Health Bill
Andrew Pollack
New York Times: Prescriptions Blog, 01/13/10
With Congress grappling to unify House and Senate health bills, Tom Daschle, the former Senate majority leader, was on the West Coast Wednesday, making his predictions for the final bill. Read more...
Not As Advertised
James C. Capretta, Ethics and Public Policy Center
National Review Online: Critical Condition, 01/04/10
Now that health-care bills have passed in both the House and the Senate, Democrats just can’t seem to stop themselves from rhetorical excess. Just before Christmas, as the bill sponsored by Majority Leader Harry Reid was clearing its final hurdles in the Senate, Democrats took to the chamber floor and cable television shows to trumpet the “historic” nature of the legislation they were about to vote on — legislation that would, at long last, move toward their long-sought goals of “universality” and a government-guaranteed right to health care. But is it so? Read more... Fact-Checking Ben Nelson
Grace-Marie Turner, Galen Institute
National Review Online: Critical Condition, 01/04/10
Sen. Ben Nelson is defending his vote to pass the Senate’s health-care legislation in a new television ad in his home state of Nebraska, but the points he makes show he either needs to force Congress to change the legislation to match his claims or rethink his support for final passage. In an attempt to quell a firestorm of opposition to his casting the crucial 60th vote for the Senate bill, Nelson says, “With all the distortions about health-care reform, I want you to hear directly from me.” He argues that the bill “lowers costs for families and small business, protects Medicare, finally guarantees coverage for preexisting conditions, and reduces the deficit. And it’s not run by the government.” Nelson adds, “I’m convinced this is right for Nebraska.” Who wouldn’t vote for such a bill? If only Nelson’s comments were accurate. Read more... Cost of Living's a Killer in the Health-Reform Deal
Paul Mulshine, The Star Ledger
NJ Voices, 12/27/09
Many of my readers have written me to express outrage over the sweetheart deal that a certain Democratic U.S. Senator from Nebraska got in return for agreeing to support the health-care reform package in the Senate. They don’t know the half of it. The half I’m talking about is the cost-of-living differential between states like Nebraska and New Jersey. That differential will have a disastrous effect on Garden State residents if the package is passed in its current form. Read more... A Matter of Principle
Grace-Marie Turner, Galen Institute
National Review Online: Critical Condition, 12/24/09
While 60 senators now have voted to pass a gigantic government-directed overhaul of our health sector, the battles back home are just beginning. The beating that Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska has taken in Washington, subjecting him and his state to nationwide ridicule for the special deals he cut in exchange for his vote, will become a firestorm once he heads home for the holidays. His earlier pledge that “my vote is not for sale, period” will become legendary. Read more... The Triumph and Tragedy of Health Politics
Thomas P. Miller, American Enterprise Institute
The American: The Enterprise Blog, 12/22/09
By now, almost all the arguments—pro, con, and equivocal—regarding health policy overhaul in name, if not in substance, have been recycled and nearly exhausted. And the relentlessly winding procession toward a near-term political disaster for many Democratic officeholders and a potentially longer-term policy disaster for most Americans will roll on, beyond a tedious House-Senate conference in the new year. Any foreseeable final product promises to make complaints about our current healthcare pale by comparison—we’ll see higher taxes, budget deficits, regulatory burdens, disruptions of current insurance coverage, and political hijacking of personal medical decisions. Read more... Career-Killing Votes Loom on Health Reform
Grace-Marie Turner, Galen Institute
National Review Online: Critical Condition, 12/20/09
Senators are in the midst of taking a series of career-killing votes to fulfill President Obama’s goal of getting a health overhaul bill — any bill — passed before Christmas.
Even as they walk the plank, many of them are telling constituents that the legislation is not that bad because they got special favors for their state. Or because Sen. Harry Reid was forced to drop the “public plan.” Or because the Congressional Budget Office says the bill is paid for (albeit with big tax increases and cuts to Medicare).
But a torrent of dangerous, collectivist provisions remains in the legislation, targeting Americans from coast to coast. Here are a dozen constituencies that will be gored, to whom senators will have to answer next time they go before the voters. Read more... The Health Care Bill Is Political Suicide
Sean Trende
the RealClearPolitics blog, 12/18/09
Health reform is shuffling toward its endgame, and even though the bill's popularity resembles George Bush's circa 2007, Democrats seem determined to push the bill through. Browse through certain liberal blogs, or listen to Democratic leadership speeches, and you'll read the same justification again and again: However bad passing this bill might be, politically speaking, not passing it would be much, much worse. Read more... For Nelson, It Shouldn’t Be a Close Call
James C. Capretta, Ethics and Public Policy Center
National Review Online: Critical Condition, 12/18/09
Senator Nelson is clearly uncomfortable with the bill as written. Any fiscal conservative would be. It’s not a close call. As the senator said yesterday, the country would be far better off with a more scaled-back bill. He’s right about that. And it’s in his power to deliver just such a bill. Pushing the discussions into 2010 would not end the health-care debate. It would only make it more likely the Senate voted in the end for something the public — and Nebraskans — would find acceptable. Read more...
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