Obama Healthcare Proposal: Potentially a Massive Disaster

Obama proposes new Healthcare Plan
Obama tries to show some sort of renewed focus on Healthcare with his own actual plan. Can you believe it? An actual Obama plan with pages, words, and ideas. It is not a Democratic Party plan, House plan, or Senate plan, it is actually HIS plan. Unfortunately he still has not learned to provide details on anything. The CBO reports it cannot score the President's plan because vital details are missing. Quite the surprise.

The plan is reported to be a hybrid of the House and Senate bills with more spending and control. It includes a provision limiting premium increases by private insurers. It has loose abortion language, more similar to the Senate plan. In other words, its the same crap with a new name.

It is a plan designed to be a consensus among Democrats. Reid has stated that he will use reconciliation to get past the filibuster in the Senate to avoid a possible Republican block. Obama has indicated he supports the plan. So here we are. Another Democratic plan, that will bypass any bipartisanship. It is unpopular among the people and among the experts. It is a disaster for the country.

Here is the part I think will be the political disaster. He is holding a Summit with Republicans that is televised which focuses on his Healthcare Plan. Couple problems with that. First, he promised to make jobs priority one this year. So far that has not been the case. Second, Obama and the democrats fully intend to use legislative manuevering so that they don't need a single Republican vote. So what is the Summit for? Obama doesn't need their support or their votes. How can he look bipartisan when he uses a shortcut so he only needs 51 votes instead of 60 in the Senate? Third, there is a provision limiting a rise in insurance cost. By adding this provision, Obama is admitting that his healthcare plan will result in higher premiums, higher costs, and that the only way he can control it is through the force of law.

This will hurt Obama's popularity and certainly hurt Democrats in November. Americans consider healthcare maybe the third or fourth priority of the country. They consider gaps in coverage the second biggest problem with healthcare, second to COST! The bill is not bipartisan, they will not pursue it in a bipartisan way. None of this is really in dispute. And yet, Obama is going on television with Republicans to talk about this.

How exactly does this all turn out well for Obama? It cannot. It will damage him further, make him look dictatorial, arrogant, and superifical. The Summit is a gimmick and everyone will see it for what it is.

And as an added bonus for Republican strategists, odds are that Obama's plan will pass the Senate but odds are strongly against it passing in the House. In the end, it will probably fail yet again on this part of his agenda, effectively wasting 14 months of his Presidency on a single agenda item.

I would've never guessed back in 2008 that Obama would be this incompetent and his party this bad at governing. Odds on Republicans retaking Congress are improving by the day.