"Who Killed Obamacare?"

Assuming that a major health care bill doesn't pass this year, the usual suspects--you know who they are--will try to pin the failure on "Republican obstructionism". (It's already started.) But that, not to put too fine a point on it, is baloney.

At the beginning of his presidency, Obama famously enjoyed a "surplus" of trust. Shortly after his inauguration, however, significant shortfalls began appearing between his rhetoric and his behavior. Having promised that his reforms would not force Americans to give up insurance plans they liked, the President signed off on a congressional proposal to kick millions of seniors off Medicare Advantage (MA). He then reversed his position on the individual mandate, suddenly endorsing a bad idea he had rejected during the 2008 presidential campaign. Next came his brazen flip-flop on the "Cadillac tax." Despite running a series of campaign ads denouncing John McCain for a similar proposal, Obama made it clear that he favored taxing "high-value" health benefits.

These broken pledges added to the trust deficit, but they didn't bust the budget. Complex issues like MA funding and the individual insurance mandate are susceptible to nuanced rationalizations. Even the Cadillac tax can be justified, with some plausibility, by sophisticated advocates. A much larger problem than any of these policy pirouettes was Obama's failure to honor, or even acknowledge, his C-SPAN promise. Obama's pledge to negotiate the details of health care reform in front of Brian Lamb's television cameras could not be finessed. In one of the more delicious ironies of the reform debate, the voters spent the holiday season watching innumerable YouTube videos of Obama making his C-SPAN promise while they noted with increasing dudgeon the conspicuous absence of similar footage of the actual negotiations

A differernt but complementary view, by the Associated Press(!): "Analysis: Dems' missteps led to health breakdown".

Comments

[kyle8]

The looter party killed it themselves by their own greed. First they lost a lot of political capital when they pushed through a "stimulus" bill that was really a lefty wish list, slush fund of pork.

Then they arrogantly froze out the Republicans. If they had only offered a minor fig leaf or two toward some of the republican ideas for reform, they could have easily peeled off two or three rinos. But NO! They had to try and get everything all at once, and all by themselves.

So they have no one to blame but themselves, and I thank God they were so stupid and arrogant.