September 22, 2009
Obama losing everybody on health care reform
Dick Morris and Eileen McGann have an insightful article in the New York Post that shows how the president's reform package is alienating just about everyone while being dishonestly sold to boot:
The young and uninsured will catch on: This bill is designed to force healthy people who don't have health insurance -- and may neither need nor want it -- to buy it anyway, in order to raise the money to subsidize those who do need it.
Obama has pledged only to increase taxes on the rich. But his program essentially taxes the core of the middle class (those making $30,000 to $80,000). It will make them overpay in order to pick up the slack for others who need the extra coverage.
In other words, health-care "reform" is a health-care tax dressed up as a program to cover the uninsured.
No matter how Democrats get the money to cover those who need insurance, they offend supporters that they need to pass the bill:
* If they get the money from more Medicare cuts, they alienate the elderly still further.
* If they get it from raising the deficit, they lose moderates.
* If they hike taxes to do it, they lose the "Blue Dog" Democrats who've gone on record as opposing such increases.
* If they don't increase the subsidies, they lose the uninsured themselves.
Not even the uninsured - those most likely to benefit from reform - are backing the president with any enthusiasm. The most recent Rasmussen poll shows 58% of the uninsured supporting reform but fully 30% strongly opposed. It begs the question:
Just who is it that wants this mutli-trillion dollar boondoggle in the first place?
Hat Tip: Ed Lasky