Political implications of passing of Health Care Reform for Washington Republicans

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Kim Moldofsky On The Impact Of Health Insurance Reform

At A March 18, 2010 press conference in the Capitol, Kim Moldofsky of Illinois (at Podium) talked about how she desires health insurance reform in front of House Majority Whip James Clyburn, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi

Creative Commons License photo credit: Speaker Pelosi

An honest conservative viewpoint regarding the political implications of health care reform from David Frum (via Waterloo | FrumForum):

Only, the hardliners overlooked a few key facts: Obama was elected with 53% of the vote, not Clinton’s 42%. The liberal block within the Democratic congressional caucus is bigger and stronger than it was in 1993-94. And of course the Democrats also remember their history, and also remember the consequences of their 1994 failure.

This time, when we went for all the marbles, we ended with none.

Could a deal have been reached? Who knows? But we do know that the gap between this plan and traditional Republican ideas is not very big. The Obama plan has a broad family resemblance to Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts plan. It builds on ideas developed at the Heritage Foundation in the early 1990s that formed the basis for Republican counter-proposals to Clintoncare in 1993-1994.

Barack Obama badly wanted Republican votes for his plan. Could we have leveraged his desire to align the plan more closely with conservative views? To finance it without redistributive taxes on productive enterprise – without weighing so heavily on small business – without expanding Medicaid? Too late now. They are all the law.

No illusions please: This bill will not be repealed. Even if Republicans scored a 1994 style landslide in November, how many votes could we muster to re-open the “doughnut hole” and charge seniors more for prescription drugs? How many votes to re-allow insurers to rescind policies when they discover a pre-existing condition? How many votes to banish 25 year olds from their parents’ insurance coverage? And even if the votes were there – would President Obama sign such a repeal?

We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.

Frum has been against conservative politicians and talk radio screaming about “Death Panels” and saying that Democrats are intending to “kill grandma”. No one listened.