Fix Health Care Policy

Our Long National Obamacare Nightmare is Just Beginning

If you are tired of our nation’s year-long health care debate and you were hoping that the passage of President Barack Obama’s health care bill would settle anything, then Politico has some bad news for you: the real fight is just getting started. Starting today, a coalition of leftist groups will sink millions of dollars into television advertising and astroturf events selling the plan to the American people. But as a Washington Post poll conducted after passage last week shows, the Obama administration and their leftist allies face a steep climb.

The top line numbers are bad but not daunting for the pro-Obamacare forces: 50% of Americans oppose the changes in the new law while 46% support them. But the numbers also show that most Americans believe the new law will cause “the overall health care system in this country” to get worse, “the quality of the health care you receive” to get worse, and “your health insurance coverage” to get worse. The poll also shows that most Americans believe the law will weaken Medicare and that there is “too much government involvement in the nation’s health care system.” And strong majorities of Americans believe Obamacare will increase the federal budget deficit (65%), increase “your health care costs” (55%), and increase “overall costs of health care in this country” (60%). The American people are right on all counts. And if the events of last week are any indication, these beliefs will only harden over time. (more…)

Tags: Caterpillar Inc., increase federal budget deficit, Medicare cuts, ObamaCare, opinion poll, Real fight, Rep. Bart Stupak, Rep. Henry Waxman

Recovering from the Stupak Stumble: The People’s House and Abortion

Sunday’s partisan vote for health care legislation in the House signals the likely end of longtime cross-party cooperation among Members opposed to abortion. The last-minute collapse of the Stupak 7, pro-life Democrats who voted for the Stupak-Pitts abortion funding limitation amendment on November 7, 2009, as well as for the House bill passed that same day, made the Democratic leaders’ retreat on the Hyde Amendment bicameral. It followed the defections last December of Senators Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Bob Casey (D-PA), who engineered much of the abortion language opposed by the National Right to Life Committee and other groups as “a political hoax.”

The Stupak Stumble follows the course of a long-term trajectory. For many years it has been nearly impossible for a Democrat with strong pro-life convictions to secure nomination to statewide federal office, much less the Presidency. Meanwhile, the number of pro-life Democrats in the U.S. House steadily declined for a generation, but there appeared to be a core group of more senior Members, led by Bart Stupak (D-MI) and other Midwest Democrats, that would hold out against the blandishments of the Democratic leadership. That illusion was all but shattered Sunday, as the latest in a series of piecrust promises, a Presidential executive order, was enough to cover the Stupak 7’s vote for a bill they had labeled “unacceptable” for months.

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Tags: ObamaCare, Presidential executive order, Rep. Bart Stupak, Stupak Stumble, Sunday health care vote, taxpayer-funded abortions

Stupak Admits He Allowed Obama to Fund Abortions With Taxpayer Money

In the final hours before the passage of Obamacare, Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) and his like-minded Democratic colleagues announced that they would vote for the legislation after President Barack Obama agreed to sign an executive order purporting to prevent the federal government from funding abortions. But one of the problem’s with this approach is that the President isn’t bound to preserve the executive order for any length of time. The President could wake up the day after signing this executive order and rescind it. Stupak himself acknowledged this in an interview with Fox News’ Megyn Kelly: (more…)

Tags: executive order, ObamaCare, Rep. Bart Stupak, Senate Health Bill, taxpayer-funded

Morning Bell: Obamacare at Any Cost

Yesterday the White House circulated a memo by pollster Joel Benenson. It was designed to create momentum for Obamacare by convincing wayward House Democrats that support for the President’s plan has been building since the State of the Union. As with everything else that comes out of the White House on health care these days, the memo is nothing but pure fantasy.

This Tuesday, Gallup released its latest poll showing that by a 48%-45% margin Americans would tell their representative in Congress to vote against President Obama’s health plan. Compare that to the last time Gallup asked the question in January, Americans supported the President’s plan 49%-46%. That’s a net six point loss in support for the President’s plan since the State of the Union. That is momentum. Against Obamacare.

And Gallup isn’t alone. The Associated Press released a poll this week showing that 68% of Americans believe the President and Congressional Democrats shouldn’t pass their health care plan without Republican support. “Nothing has been more disconcerting than to watch Democratic politicians and their media supporters deceive themselves into believing that the public favors the Democrats’ current health-care plan,” Democratic pollsters Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen add in today’s Washington Post, “A solid majority of Americans opposes the massive health-reform plan.” (more…)

Tags: Cornhusker Kickback, ObamaCare, President's proposal, Rep. Bart Stupak, start over

Morning Bell: Dead Legislation Walking

Another day, another stream of health care fantasy from the White House. A quick look at two health care events from yesterday, one in Glenside, Pennsylvania, and the other in Tawas City, Michigan, clearly exposes the yawing gap between the Obama administration’s health care rhetoric and cold hard legislative reality. First in Glenside, President Barack Obama turned up the volume on his already tired “final push” for health care reform. In addition to the usual litany of false claims about the legislation in Congress (in fact, you don’t get to keep your doctor, it isn’t paid for, it doesn’t reduce costs) President Obama also repeated his new line from his doctors-in-lab-coats address last week:

“We have now incorporated almost every single serious idea from across the political spectrum about how to contain the rising cost of health care … Our cost-cutting measures mirror most of the proposals in the current Senate bill…”

But, as we pointed out last week, there is one not-so-minor difference between the Senate bill and the President’s new proposal: the Senate bill actually exists. Now, Democrats may be telling their conservative counterparts that they will have reconciliation legislative text in front of the Budget Committee by tomorrow, but don’t hold your breath. The “fixes” that the White House is promising wavering House Democrats they will make all sound easy at first glance: 1) scaling back the tax on high-end health insurance policies; 2) closing the Medicare D loophole; 3) boosting insurance subsidies; 4) increasing Medicaid payments; and 5) fixing the Cornhusker Kickback. But when you take a second look, you see that all of these “fixes” will cost more money. Just look at the Cornhusker Kickback which the President chose to address, not by taking away Nebraska’s special Medicaid payments, but by extending those extra Medicaid payments to every state! Every single item in the President’s proposal either increases spending or reduces new revenues. And he didn’t put forward any way to pay for them. If passing health reform were as easy as giving away free candy, Obamacare would be law already. Finding a way to pay for all these fixes is going to be just as difficult as every earlier effort to pay for this bill. So don’t expect any solutions anytime soon. (more…)

Tags: Cadillac tax, Cornhusker Kickback, ObamaCare, President's proposal, Rep. Bart Stupak, Senate Health Bill, taxpayer-funded abortions

The Few Standing Between Current Law and Tax Payer Funded Abortion

In a Christmas Eve vote, the American people watched a U.S. Senator betray his pro-life principles for $100 million. The version of Obamacare that passed the Senate is the one to watch—it changes current law and allows taxpayer dollars to fund plans that cover elective abortions for the first time in years—and with the hair’s-width margin by which it passed, it may well emerge from the negotiations between the House and the Senate. The only thing that stands between Americans and a law forcing them to fund abortion coverage against their conscience, is a small group of House Democrats, who, led by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI), dug in their heels for an amendment in the House version upholding current law limiting tax-funded abortions.

On November 9th, President Obama said, “I laid out a very simple principle, which is this is a health care bill, not an abortion bill… And we’re not looking to change what is the principle that has been in place for a very long time, which is federal dollars are not used to subsidize abortions.” (more…)

Tags: ObamaCare, Rep. Bart Stupak, Sen. Ben Nelson, taxpayer funded abortion