Health Care Reform...Sound off here, An ET Roundtable.

every state imposes minimum limits on auto insurance.

 

Yes, and you get better rates if you're a good driver. And unless I'm mistaken, you are only required to have insurance if you wish to drive. You indicated states impose minimum limits. That's a big difference from federal government imposed limits when discussing freedom.

 

I know you could start a militia whose job would be to go after the scammers, that way the government wouldn't have to do it.

 

Conservatives and Republicans today suffered their most crushing legislative defeat since the 1960s.

It’s hard to exaggerate the magnitude of the disaster. Conservatives may cheer themselves that they’ll compensate for today’s expected vote with a big win in the November 2010 elections. But:

(1) It’s a good bet that conservatives are over-optimistic about November – by then the economy will have improved and the immediate goodies in the healthcare bill will be reaching key voting blocs.

(2) So what? Legislative majorities come and go. This healthcare bill is forever. A win in November is very poor compensation for this debacle now.

So far, I think a lot of conservatives will agree with me. Now comes the hard lesson:

A huge part of the blame for today’s disaster attaches to conservatives and Republicans ourselves.

At the beginning of this process we made a strategic decision: unlike, say, Democrats in 2001 when President Bush proposed his first tax cut, we would make no deal with the administration. No negotiations, no compromise, nothing. We were going for all the marbles. This would be Obama’s Waterloo – just as healthcare was Clinton’s in 1994.

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.

There were leaders who knew better, who would have liked to deal. But they were trapped. Conservative talkers on Fox and talk radio had whipped the Republican voting base into such a frenzy that deal-making was rendered impossible. How do you negotiate with somebody who wants to murder your grandmother? Or – more exactly – with somebody whom your voters have been persuaded to believe wants to murder their grandmother?

I’ve been on a soapbox for months now about the harm that our overheated talk is doing to us. Yes it mobilizes supporters – but by mobilizing them with hysterical accusations and pseudo-information, overheated talk has made it impossible for representatives to represent and elected leaders to lead. The real leaders are on TV and radio, and they have very different imperatives from people in government. Talk radio thrives on confrontation and recrimination. When Rush Limbaugh said that he wanted President Obama to fail, he was intelligently explaining his own interests. What he omitted to say – but what is equally true – is that he also wants Republicans to fail. If Republicans succeed – if they govern successfully in office and negotiate attractive compromises out of office – Rush’s listeners get less angry. And if they are less angry, they listen to the radio less, and hear fewer ads for Sleepnumber beds.

So today’s defeat for free-market economics and Republican values is a huge win for the conservative entertainment industry. Their listeners and viewers will now be even more enraged, even more frustrated, even more disappointed in everybody except the responsibility-free talkers on television and radio. For them, it’s mission accomplished. For the cause they purport to represent, it’s Waterloo all right: ours.

Recent Posts by David Frum

 

why don't they call it sick insurance

 

good god .. my two favorite words...



i have nothing else to offer.



Once these idiot-leftist-tyrant-dictators declare how i live my life illegal, you'll hear from me again, in the form of loud explosives

 

the premiums alone are enough to give you a nosebleed

 

From 2009. One man's opinion of Frum. Summed up nicely in the first few minutes.


http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2009/07/29/mark_levin_david_frum_is_a_fraud.html

 

i hope the republicans start blaming each other. that way they will miss the real issue that should keep them a minority for a long time. they are out of touch.
you think the fox news talkers really have anything to lose if republicans self destruct?

 

I don't really see the republicans playing much of a role currently. The only republicans who like this current bill are sell outs, especially those in the media. Republican politicians share the blame of not correcting the healthcare issues when they were in power, but in the current scenario there is nothing to blame on each other as they are actually unified.

The current healthcare battle is between dems. And those opposed are being threatened, bought off, or otherwise arm twisted into joining the cause. Take Stupak. The promise of his desire by executive order. Is he so stupid that he doesn't realize that the order will be rescinded as fast as it is issued? Give me a break. I wonder what really happened.

I was happy to contribute my share to those who truly need healthcare, but not at the expense imposed by this new monstrosity. If the IRS agent statements circulating are true regarding enforcement...well let me ask you this. How do you feel about having them nosing around because you were down on your luck and couldn't afford your gov mandated minimum?