Friday, March 23, 2012

Five Things That Democrats Got Wrong About Medicare

And this list doesn't even include, "we have to pass it to know what's in it."
Sample: Rather than push Democratic approval ratings into the stratosphere, as former President Bill Clinton often claimed it would, the health law contributed directly to Democrats losing the House in 2010, according to a study published this month in the journal American Politics Research.

Since Republicans had zero buy-in, they’ve been emboldened to thwart the law in every way possible: block key administration nominees, restrict funding and roll back provisions. As long as a Democrat occupies the White House, the success of these efforts will be limited. But that could change if the Supreme Court strikes down all or part of the law — or if a Republican defeats Obama in November.

The administration’s pursuit of Republican votes through 2009 is the reason the health care fight dragged on, diverting attention for more than a year from Americans’ top concerns: the economy and jobs. The drive for a bipartisan bill was a strategy advocated by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and supported by the White House, much to the annoyance of many Democrats.

In his new book “Fighting For Our Health,” Richard Kirsch, who led the progressive coalition Health Care for America Now, called it “one of the biggest blunders of the entire effort to win reform.”

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