Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Health Reform And The Specter Of 1994

From the New Republic...

It's becoming increasingly obvious that not only wholesale Republican opposition, but Democratic divisions, are risking the enactment of health reform legislation this year. Some of those divisions are rooted in relatively narrow objections this or that bill--e.g., jurisdictional squabbles between committees or between House and Senate approaches--or this or that provision--e.g., union opposition to taxation of high-end employer-sponsored health benefits. But the bigger division which falls roughly along ideological lines involves "moderate" Democrats (sometimes, as in last week's Senate "gang of six," working with like-minded Republicans) who seem to prefer delaying action on health reform to enactment of anything that vastly increases federal budget deficits, fails to reduce health care inflation, or exposes Democrats to conservative attacks on "big government."

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