Huge victory! It looks like Obamacare is dead–at least in its present iteration. From the story:
Congressional Democrats are abandoning their massive health care package in the face of strong public resistance manifested in the election of Republican Scott Brown of Massachusetts to the Senate. Brown’s victory Tuesday halted the intense backroom negotiations aimed at merging competing House and Senate versions of President Obama’s health plan. The bills, developed over more than a year of legislative work, would have expanded coverage for the poor, created a national health insurance plan and paid for it with increased taxes and Medicare cuts. “Both of those bills, as they stand now, are dead,” said Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., after a caucus meeting with panicked House Democrats, who characterized Brown’s win and the message it sent as their party’s Hurricane Katrina. “I got the sense that people want to move on and not look back at the House or Senate bill.”
Apparently, there will be smaller initiatives tried. But they won’t include the Big Magillas of Obamacare:
“The worst position for a politician to be in is to say to the public, ‘Open wide and swallow, this is good for you,’ ” said Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., who is president of the House’s politically vulnerable freshman class. “I don’t want to be in this situation and my colleagues don’t either.” Democrats are now considering a drastically scaled-back plan that could be passed in smaller, separate pieces. It would not include a public option, mandatory insurance or the creation of any new entitlement programs.
This could be inside maneuvering, but these are Democrats proclaiming the death, so it seems credible. If so, ain’t democracy grand? To quote Abraham Lincoln, “Public sentiment is everything.”
But it can’t stop here. Now, let’s talk other ideas, such as supporting health clinics in malls, opening up insurance competition across state lines, finding ways to find cover the hard to insure, such as they do in states with auto insurance, and vouchers to help people buy coverage.
January 21st, 2010 | 10:28 pm
I like it, where are the incentives ? The kiosks? The vouchers?
January 21st, 2010 | 10:32 pm
Hmmmm…good and bad news. Good, because the current bill is not acceptable. Bad, because we do need healthcare reform. The major problem with the current plan, IMO, are the medicare cuts. If this can be ammended and the medicare cuts nixed, then that will be a big step in improving the plan. I think that your ideas are good, too, Wesley.
January 22nd, 2010 | 1:04 am
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Vince Humphreys, Anne Hayes, Billy McKee, Alan George, Pro-Life Healthcare and others. Pro-Life Healthcare said: Obamacare: The Plug is Being Pulled! http://bit.ly/7RHctf #hcr [...]
January 22nd, 2010 | 10:57 am
What makes anyone think that helping insurance companies make more money is going to lower costs? Remember when similar “deregulation” was applied to banks in the 1970s? Have things improved?
January 22nd, 2010 | 11:55 am
HW…
Do you consider that
“opening up insurance competition across state lines” = deregulation?
January 22nd, 2010 | 12:00 pm
[...] Widgets « Previous |Home| Obamacare: Majority [...]
January 22nd, 2010 | 2:23 pm
Wesley,
Back in the days of Hillarycare–prior to the 1994 midterms–didn’t the Republicans propose an alternative health-care reform bill? It obviously got no traction in those days, but it had some good points, and it was dropped after Hillarycare died. Maybe it’s time for the Republicans to do something like this again.
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
January 22nd, 2010 at 3:07 pm
I don’t know if they did. I don’t recall them ever seriously pushing anything in that regard except for Bush obtaining prescription drug coverage under Medicare, for which I think he receives way too little credit.
January 22nd, 2010 | 2:26 pm
i totally agree with HistoryWriter nothing has really changed and with this mothod they most probly will not!
January 22nd, 2010 | 5:01 pm
PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS
What better way to make money as an “insurance company” than to offer a product up front, the promise of being covered in the case of a medical need, and then yank that rug right out from under you when you need it by using some technicality, like a “pre-existing” condition?
Further, soak the living while you can. I’m gonna let you in on a secret: insurance companies LOVE it when a patient dies – no more paying for their survival when it was gonna cost ‘em.
Of course, people don’t know they need medical care, generally, till it actually hits the fan. Hence, most think they are doing ‘just fine’ and they think their insurance is okie dokie. Wait my little dearies, just wait; Nature is cruel.
As anyone who has studied science and medicine knows – we ALL have pre-existing conditions. God didn’t give us perfect immune systems or bodies, but evolution sure helped us over the past 4 billion years to get some decent ones most of the time.
Praise be to Evolution, I bow before thy mighty throne of selection!
January 23rd, 2010 | 10:33 am
Yes, we need healthcare, but why must it be at the federal level? Does no one pay attention to the constitution? “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the Ststes, are reserved to the States or to the people.” (Amendment #10, the last of the Bill of Rights). Everything else that the federal level runs contrary to that amendment is inefficiently run – social security, medicare, housing, Amtrak. Why would anyone think they can administer this well?
January 25th, 2010 | 9:32 am
James Stephens: I’ve never known a Republican to propose a “reform” that wasn’t going to make major corporations richer at the average taxpayers’ expense — unless you count some bipartisan proposals by so-called RINOs like Jacob Javits (NY, 1970s), such as ERISA. Letting insurance companies compete across state lines will eventually result in the larger companies buying up the smaller ones, reducing the number of insurers and actually DECREASING competition. Look at what’s happened in banking.
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