Why Democrats Fought for a Republican Health Care Plan: Articles that help to explain why.

[Better Believe It]

Why Democrats are fighting for a Republican health plan
By E.J. Dionne
March 19, 2010

Here is the ultimate paradox of the Great Health Care Showdown: Congress will divide along partisan lines to pass a Republican version of health care reform, and Republicans will vote against it.

Yes, Democrats have rallied behind a bill that Republicans -- or at least large numbers of them -- should love. It is built on a series of principles that Republicans espoused for years.

Republicans have said that they do not want to destroy the private insurance market. This bill not only preserves that market but strengthens it by bringing in millions of new customers. The plan before Congress does not call for a government “takeover” of health care. It provides subsidies so more people can buy private insurance.

Republicans always say they are against “socialized medicine.” Not only is this bill nothing like a “single-payer” health system along Canadian or British lines. It doesn’t even include the “public option” that would have allowed people voluntarily to buy their insurance from the government. The single-payer idea fell by the wayside long ago, and supporters of the public option -- sadly, from my point of view -- lost out last December.

Republicans now say they hate the mandate that requires everyone to buy insurance. But an individual mandate was hailed as a form of “personal responsibility” by no less a conservative Republican than Mitt Romney. He was proud of the mandate, and also proud of the insurance exchange idea, known in Massachusetts as “The Health Connector” (the idea itself came from the conservative Heritage Foundation). Romney had a right to be proud. As governor of Massachusetts in 2006, he signed a bill that is the closest thing there is to a model for what the Democrats are proposing.

Read the full article at:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2010/03/why_democrats_are_fighting_for.html

---------------------------------------------------

The curious triumph of RomneyCare
Neither Democrats nor Republicans have an incentive to discuss the Republican roots of Obama's health-care plan. But that doesn't mean they're not real—and deep.
By Brad DeLong
March 22, 2010

It has been a long slog, since those days in the early 1990s when right-wing policy analysts proposed an individual mandate to purchase health coverage as a respectable, market-oriented, responsibility-based alternative to either government-provided health care (the nanny state) or mandated employer-provided health care (the boss state). In November 2004, Republican Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts followed through on that conservative proposal, and in April 2006, he signed into Massachusetts law a health-reform plan based on it.

Having conquered Massachusetts, RomneyCare is now the law of the land. But how did Republican RomneyCare become Democratic ObamaCare?

So why are none of the talking heads on your TV screen and none of the op-ed writers in your newspaper talking about how this health plan is a big victory for Mitt Romney and Republican policy analysts? Because there has been a conspiracy of silence among those working for the bill and those working against it.

Republicans working against the bill have been unwilling to say "It's RomneyCare!" because they would then face the awkward question of why they did not support it. And they were never, never, never going to vote for it. The point for the Republican legislators, you see, was to follow the Gingrich strategy: Work as hard as you can to block the Democratic president’s initiatives so that the press then portrays him as a wimp. Then, Republicans could pick up seats and regain their congressional majorities—for Americans do not like wimps and the politicians who support them. This political gambit overwhelmed all policy considerations. The Son of Man himself, coming unto the Ancient of Days and stating that this was his favorite health-care financing mechanism, could not have called forth Republican votes for it in Congress.

And the Democrats? Well, the critical votes—numbers 200-240 in the House and numbers 55-60 in the Senate—would vote for RomneyCare but not for anything more liberal and interventionist. These Democrats would not support any form of government-provided health care—not even Medicare-for-All or Federal-Employees-Health-Benefit-Plan-for-All. They were not on board for any plan that required businesses to pool the costs of their workers and bargain in their behalf for affordable health care. They were not even on board for a plan that allowed people to vote-with-their-feet and sign up for Medicare if they thought it was a better deal than their private insurance.

So for the Democrats, it was RomneyCare or nothing. Thus the task for Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Barack Obama was to hold the Democratic right to RomneyCare while not losing the Democratic left. As long as they could say to the left, "Look, this is what we can pass: It's a lot better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick (and a poke in the eye with a sharp stick is a lot better than our current health-care financing system)," they had a chance of holding the left, especially if they could sweeten it with progressive tax and subsidy policies. But if they pointed out the intellectual origins of the plan—oh, and by the way, the guts of the plan came out of the conservative über-think tank, the Heritage Foundation, and it was what Mitt Romney thought was good policy back in 2004—then the left-wing Democrats' heads would have exploded and their votes would have vanished.

Read the full article at:

http://theweek.com/bullpen/column/201077/The_curious_triumph_of_RomneyCare

-------------------------------------------------------



March 21, 2010

Republicans Reject Their Own Ideas
in Health Insurance Reform Legislation

Congress is taking the final steps to pass comprehensive health insurance reform legislation that will reduce the deficit, strengthen Medicare by extending its solvency by nearly a decade, and expand affordable coverage for the middle class.

The legislation before the House includes Republican ideas, but unfortunately, it will not receive any Republican votes.

The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza reports that: “Congressional Republicans…made an early strategic calculation that unified opposition to the president’s overall agenda was their best course of action.” <3/21/10>

The legislation, which will cover 32 million more Americans and reduce the deficit by $143 billion in the first ten years and $1.2 trillion in the second ten years, contains ideas that have been long-supported by the Republican Party.

As President Obama said yesterday in his speech to House Democrats:

“…this piece of historic legislation is built on the private insurance system that we have now and runs straight down the center of American political thought. It turns out this is a bill that tracks the recommendations not just of Democrat Tom Daschle, but also Republicans Bob Dole and Howard Baker; that this is a middle-of-the-road bill that is designed to help the American people in an area of their lives where they urgently need help.” <3/20/10>

http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/03/24/pelosi-heritage-foundation/

------------------------------------------------------

The Final Health Care Vote and What it Really Means
By Robert Reich
March 21, 2010

It’s not nearly as momentous as the passage of Medicare in 1965 and won’t fundamentally alter how Americans think about social safety nets. But the likely passage of Obama’s health care reform bill is the biggest thing Congress has done in decades, and has enormous political significance for the future.

Medicare directly changed the life of every senior in America, giving them health security and dramatically reducing their rates of poverty. By contrast, most Americans won’t be affected by Obama’s health care legislation. Most of us will continue to receive health insurance through our employers. (Only a comparatively small minority will be required to buy insurance who don’t want it, or be subsidized in order to afford it. Only a relatively few companies will be required to provide it who don’t now.)

Medicare built on Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal notion of government as insurer, with citizens making payments to government, and government paying out benefits. That was the central idea of Social Security, and Medicare piggybacked on Social Security.

Obama’s legislation comes from an alternative idea, begun under the Eisenhower administration and developed under Nixon, of a market for health care based on private insurers and employers. Eisenhower locked in the tax break for employee health benefits; Nixon pushed prepaid, competing health plans, and urged a requirement that employers cover their employees. Obama applies Nixon’s idea and takes it a step further by requiring all Americans to carry health insurance, and giving subsidies to those who need it.

So don’t believe anyone who says Obama’s health care legislation marks a swing of the pendulum back toward the Great Society and the New Deal. Obama’s health bill is a very conservative piece of legislation, building on a Republican rather than a New Deal foundation. The New Deal foundation would have offered Medicare to all Americans or, at the very least, featured a public insurance option.

Read the full article at:

http://robertreich.org/post/463440906/the-final-health-care-vote-and-what-it-really-means

[ixion]

1. How Avante Garde'

:eyes: and what an intricate rationalization.

[RaleighNCDUer]

2. What there is not true? nt

[zipplewrath]

3. Which is why I opposed it

"So don’t believe anyone who says Obama’s health care legislation marks a swing of the pendulum back toward the Great Society and the New Deal. Obama’s health bill is a very conservative piece of legislation, building on a Republican rather than a New Deal foundation."

It is a conservative/GOP/anti-universal health CARE piece of legislation. Obama has admitted as much. Deals were cut with big Pharma and there was an attempt to create something the insurance companies could support. I suspect in the end they only didn't because they thought that possibly they could stop it anyway. Instead they've got folks at DU claiming what a "big fucking deal" it is.

Yeah, I'm sure Dole and Baker are thrilled.

[indepat]

4. By George (E.J.), I think he's got it and it sadly shows the only social legislation that can get

passed is a Republican idea that favors large corporations/the relatively few who own/control a major portion of the nation's wealth rather than an idea which promotes the general welfare. All this leads to the inescapable conclusion that: our elected national government is financially/ideologically corrupted beyond any hope of redemption and a current majority of the appointed members of the high court is ideologically corrupted maybe even more so. The results of the national agenda having been largely set by Republican ideas for over 50 years manifests itself every day in the headlines about the economy, unemployment, decreasing home values, decreased standards of living, a hideously low minimum wage, a high rate of incarceration for non-violent drug crimes, reckless fiscal and unfair tax policies begetting huge annual budget deficits and a spiraling and unsustainable national debt, deregulation and a laizze-faire approach to governance leading to the likes of the near-catastrophic financial meltdown, perpetual war(s) of aggression, military spending, with 5% of the world's population, almost as great as the entire rest of the world, 37th in health-care, and shameful longevity, infant mortality, and maternity mortality rates as compared to the rest of the industrialized world, I could go on for a few more pages, but surely everyone caring a whit about any of this get the drift. :shrug:

[Better Believe It]

5. The really good stuff is coming yet. Cutting "entitlements" like Social Security and Medicare

[indepat]

6. Congress certainly isn't going to mess much with the highest marginal tax rates or the favorable

taxation of capital gains and probably even dividends, all which have contributed mightily to a 12-fold increase in national debt since the gipper launched his voodoo economics. But all is not lost for much of that burgeoning national debt now reposes as part of the wealth of a relative few, thereby much further concentrating the national wealth amongst these few. It was a Republican operation from the start. :-)

[Better Believe It]

7. Of course not. Wall Street will not approve.

[amborin]

8. recommended