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.
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