March 2, 2010
Over the past year, many commentators have noted that the Democratic party has invested so much in the health-care effort that Team Obama would do just about anything to get a bill to the president’s desk. We are now witnessing the depths to which the administration is willing to sink to do just that. What would appear to be the...
March 1, 2010
At last week’s Blair House meeting, several Democrats, including Senator Chris Dodd and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, repeated the standard talking point used by those pushing for passage of a big health-care bill, which is that it is simply not possible to write a sensible plan that isn’t also “comprehensive.”...
February 25, 2010
At the White House meeting going on right now, a recurring subject of debate has been this question: Will health-insurance premiums increase from the Senate bill? As usual, the president is playing fast and loose with the facts. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says that premiums would go down in the individual market from the...
February 25, 2010
The president is trying to make it seem like the only cuts in the Medicare program he is advocating are for Medicare Advantage (MA) plans. That’s demonstrably not true. The chief actuary has raised concerns about the payment-rate reductions that the Democrats are pushing for hospitals in the traditional program. He believes those...
February 24, 2010
The Obama administration has gone to great lengths to convince the press that the plan the president released on Monday would cost “only” $950 billion over ten years. At the moment, there’s no Congressional Budget Office (CBO) cost estimate to contradict the White House’s claim. Nor did the administration provide...
February 23, 2010
The Obama White House and Congressional Democrats are trying to treat the Massachusetts Senate election the same way they treated last summer’s town hall meetings — by ignoring it. But it’s very unlikely to work this time around. Last August, it was already apparent that Obamacare was in deep trouble with a skeptical...
February 22, 2010
Over at National Review Online, I take a look at Congressman Paul Ryan’s “Roadmap” for entitlement and tax reform. The piece focuses on the reforms which are crucial to building a functioning marketplace in the health sector. An excerpt: Elected Democrats and their allies have also taken note of Ryan’s proposal....
February 22, 2010
In the latest issue of the Weekly Standard, my colleague Yuval Levin and I have a short editorial on the White House “summit”on health care coming up later this week. Here’s a short excerpt: It is now clear that the “summit” the president has called for February 25 is not intended to consider different...
February 17, 2010
Over on National Review Online, I have a new Corner post about the politics of President Obama’s new Debt Commission. Here’s a snippet relevant to the concerns of this blog: Then there’s the issue of health care. The president and his advisers have said they have no intention of abandoning the health-care bills that...
February 12, 2010
Over on National Review Online, I have a new piece about the president’s agenda, the national debt, and the political moment. An excerpt: After Scott Brown’s stunning victory in the Massachusetts special election last month, it is now clear that the coalition President Obama was counting on to pass his health-care bill and...