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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: calgal who wrote (23716)	10/27/2007 12:23:20 AM
From: calgal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

jewishworldreview.com

To: calgal who wrote (23716)	10/29/2007 12:48:51 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

The SCHIP authorization must be reenacted only if it is not allowed to grow at a precipitous rate. It makes sense to ensure that poor children are fully insured before displacing private insurance with government programs.

To: calgal who wrote (23716)	1/7/2008 1:30:01 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

HillaryCare v. Obama The left's health-care spat. Monday, January 7, 2008 12:01 a.m. EST Once Hillary Clinton got roughed up in Iowa, she was bound to strike back against Barack Obama. Her first line of attack debuted at the Democratic debate over the weekend, and a big part of it concerns health care. Their differences are more political than substantive, but the debate does tell us something about current policy ambitions on the American left. "Universal" health care is of course a major Democratic issue, and Mr. Obama laid out a proposal in May, Mrs. Clinton in September. Both plans create a public insurance option managed by the government. Both plans impose more stringent regulations on insurance companies, and both institute new taxes on business. The main substantive difference is that Mrs. Clinton's plan would dictate that everyone have health insurance, while Mr. Obama's would only require the coverage of children. This so-called "individual mandate" has become the preferred liberal health policy tool after Mitt Romney introduced it in Massachusetts. In theory, such a law would force everyone to sign up for health insurance--either through their employers, a private plan or a government option--or otherwise pay penalties. That Mr. Obama's mandate is limited to kids has led to a primary catfight that runs back several months, and Mrs. Clinton is pressing the issue especially hard now to attract liberals who think Mr. Obama is the better bet for "change." She said on Saturday that Mr. Obama "proposed a health-care plan that doesn't cover everybody." Mr. Obama counters that the reason many people aren't insured is because they can't afford it. Supposedly he is "echoing right-wing talking points," but he is more accurately echoing reality. Massachusetts has exempted almost 20% of uninsured adults who don't qualify for subsidies from mandated coverage because it is too expensive. (No thanks to the state's health-care regulations, which Mr. Romney now prefers not to mention.) The logic of the individual mandate is that welfare programs will be necessary to achieve truly universal coverage. Thus it is in practice less an individual, and more a government, mandate. In any case, these health-care plans aren't worth the white papers they're printed on, because Congress would carve them up along the way. Rather, they speak to aspirations. For "progressives," Mr. Obama's lack of a mandate is a kind of betrayal. Their political goal is to use incremental steps to gradually achieve a government-run health-care system--and Mr. Obama's steps aren't grand enough. At least by comparison to Mrs. Clinton. Her attacks are intended to appeal to liberals because they highlight one of the few cases where her triangulating produced a policy position more ambitious, and more leftward, than Mr. Obama's. They also highlight her history as an agent of "change," if you consider Mrs. Clinton's calamitous 1994 failure with HillaryCare to be helpful experience. She's betting that Democratic primary voters will give her credit for having tried. The new liberal consensus is that her 1994 effort got the policy right but botched the politics. Now a progressive agenda will only be ushered in by "confronting" Republicans. That's why Mrs. Clinton--and John Edwards--posits insurance and pharmaceutical companies as villains who must be vanquished for liberal reform to prevail. By contrast, Mr. Obama says a genuine health-care overhaul must be negotiated at a "big table" including industry. Such feints toward bipartisanship and reconciliation don't appeal to today's angry left. However it turns out, this less than Grand Guignol ought to provide a warning to Republicans. Whatever the minor policy differences among Democrats, their major domestic ambition this campaign season is the government takeover of the health-care market. The Republican nominee will need a free-market alternative, and a way of explaining it that is more concise and compelling than we've heard so far. opinionjournal.com