Tevi Troy on the Bill Bennett Show – March 8th, 2010
Category: Tevi Troy
As published for The Arena on Politico.com on March 5th, 2010:
The truth is that the public option has had up or down votes and fallen short. Two versions of the public option came before the Senate Finance Committee, which crafted the outlines of what became the Senate health care bill. Both public option alternatives failed in that committee, thanks to bipartisan opposition. Sen. Reid later tried to insert the public option into his version of what became the Senate bill but found that he could not keep his bloc of 60 non-Republicans together with the public option included. Adding the public option back in now would make an already unpopular package even less popular.
As published for Critical Condition on healthcare.nationalreview.com on March 3rd, 2010:
By my count, President Obama’s health-care speech today was at least his 40th speech focusing on health care; as part of his effort to push his health-care plan, he has had seven major “stop the presses” events on the subject: his White House health-care forum last March; his ABC infomercial with Charlie Gibson and Diane Sawyer in June; the joint session of Congress speech in September; his State of the Union address
in January; last Monday’s release of his new eleven-page proposal; the health-care summit last Thursday; and now his 1:45 pm speech today.
Unsurprisingly, given how many times we have heard him on this subject, the speech today did not provide any new revelations. He asserted that all agree on the problem, but then tried to triangulate the fix by saying that he did not support a government-run system, nor did he support giving “the insurance industry even freer rein to raise premiums and deny care.” (Note: In case you were wondering who supported giving the insurance companies “freer rein,” he probably meant you, dear reader, since only about 40 percent of Americans back the president’s approach.)
He used an old Henry Kissinger trick to show the reasonableness of his approach. Kissinger is reputed to have framed decisions to his bosses in the following way: “The choices before us are thermonuclear war or utter capitulation. And then there is the staff-preferred option.” Given those choices, of course, any president would prefer the staff-preferred option.
As published for Critical Condition on healthcare.nationalreview.com on March 2nd, 2010:
After two and a half months of relatively light Congressional activity on the health-care front, Democrats are apparently gearing up for a hyperactive March. According to Inside Health Policy (subscription required), the period between now and Easter will be filled with a series of complicated steps that will all need to work perfectly in order for the Democrats to pass their health plan before Congress leaves for its spring break. First, the president will be issuing his revised new proposal, which will be converted into legislative language and then scored by CBO. By March 19, the House would then pass the health bill that the Senate passed back in December — and that the House has repeatedly said they did not like and would not pass — with the assurance that the Senate would go forward and fix it in accordance with some type of bicameral compromise. The House would then have to act again, by March 21, and pass a reconciliation bill amending the Senate bill that the House would have just passed.
At this point, and only after the House had acted twice, the Senate would take up the reconciliation bill changing the original Senate bill to reflect the president’s new proposal. This bill would be considered under the reconciliation process, with 30 hours of debate and passage via a simple majority rather than the 60 votes the Senate typically requires. Effectively, this process will use the passage of the Senate bill to enable the reconciliation vehicle to proceed and become the new health-care law.
Read the full post here
As published for The Corner on nationalreview.com on March 1st, 2010:
It has been a good day for the nascent Mitch Daniels in 2012 campaign, with op-ed pieces by him the Journal, and about him in the New York Times — both highlighted in the NRO Web Briefing. The Journal piece highlights how effective Indiana’s Health Savings Accounts have been in driving consumer-based health purchasing in the state. A consumer-driven approach is one of the best ways of bringing down costs economy wide, and we would benefit from using that approach in the health sphere. The Timespiece, a column by Ross Douthat, calls Daniels “America’s best governor.” Given the long-term fiscal difficulties we are facing, a former OMB director with executive experience could be a good call. And he is smart, funny, and conservative to boot.
As published for The Arena on politico.com on March 1st, 2010:
Given that the Democrats only had 220 votes in the House for their health care bill back in November and have lost four votes since then – Wexler, Abrecrombie, Murtha, and Cao – I would imagine that it would be difficult for them to round up the votes for ramming health care through via the reconciliation process.
The health care bill was not popular then, and it has not gotten any more popular since. Furthermore, the Scott Brown upset win in Massachusetts – in which he even won Barney Frank’s liberal district – has made Democratic members realize that they all could be vulnerable.
By the time the wheeling and dealing is done on this one, the “Cornhusker Kickback” and “Louisiana Purchase” will seem tame.
As published for The National Review on February 25th, 2010:
The machinations leading up to the Blair House summit have resembled a chess match in which one side – the Democrats — can’t decide who gets to move the pieces on its side of the board. Both theHouse and Senate passed health-care bills about two months ago, yet President Obama’s plan, released earlier this week, did not have the support of either chamber’s Democrats when it was released. In fact, congressional Democrats had been asking to see an advance version of the plan but were rebuffed by the White House. In addition, as the New York Times reported, the main reason that President Obama had to — finally — release a White House plan is that the Democrats in the House and Senate could not come to an agreement, and the president had promised that he would post a Democratic proposal 72 hours before the summit. As a result of this new, third proposal, we now have even less Democratic unity than we had before Obama stepped in. When the summit takes place, this could lead to the awkward spectacle of Obama arguing for his plan, Reid and his Democratic colleagues arguing for the Senate bill, and Pelosi’s people arguing for the House bill.
Another problem with the president’s proposal is Congressional Budget Office’s inability to score it before the summit. CBO’s explanation for this was pretty devastating: They said that the proposal did not have enough detail to be scored, and even if there had been enough detail, they did not have enough time to come up with a score. Given that we have known the summit was coming for about a month, this appears to be inexcusable. Yet the White House may have waited so long because they feared the score they were going to get. Budget experts I have talked to think CBO is likely to find that the president’s proposal will cost considerably more than the $950 billion the White House claimed, likely over a trillion dollars. It is not clear why “under a trillion dollars” has become a Democratic standard for frugality, but that appears to be the standard President Obama has set, and not having a CBO score in time for the summit avoids potential awkwardness on that front.
As published for The Arena on politico.com on February 25th, 2010:
Dana Perino:
Given the Democrats are falling all over themselves to get to the press to spin their version of what went wrong in their health care reform push, I think Republicans stand to gain the most from today’s summit.
Think about it – for a year they were shut out of the process and they could not get a word in edgewise in the press to talk about their ideas. Today, the media will be forced to talk about their proposals – ideas that everyone should be able to agree are reasonable, smart, and effective.
As long as no one gives the media something ridiculous to seize on – a big sigh, a roll of the eyes, a jab in the elbows of their neighbor while they try to keep from laughing at the absurdity of it all – the GOP wins the day.
Tevi Troy:
Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats are going to change their minds at today’s Blair House showdown. The tough task for President Obama is going to be to get the American people, three-fifths of whom oppose his trillion dollar health overhaul, to change their minds. Given that far more Americans would rather watch “The Bachelor” than six hours of health policy discussions on C-Span 3, this task will be nearly impossible.
As published for The Weekly Standard on February 23rd, 2010:
The Obama administration has its work cut out.
As citizens across the nation debate and dissect President Obama’s State of the Union address, we should not miss the opportunity to make good on one of his promises. President Obama devoted one line of his 70-minute speech to announcing a new plan to address the potential for bioterror attacks.
In light of increased chatter among terrorists and last fall’s experience with the H1N1 virus, it is clear we need new ideas and mechanisms of delivery if we want to save American lives. In fact, the bipartisan Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction, Proliferation and Terrorism just gave the United States an “F” for our “capabilities for rapid response to prevent biological attacks from inflicting mass casualties.”
Unfortunately, facing this problem will require more than a few lines in an otherwise crowded speech, including some creative thinking that uses the wherewithal and ingenuity of the American people.
Although the president did not elaborate on his plan, the White House did issue a brief statement that gave a little more detail, saying that the president would ask “U.S. government leaders to re-design our medical countermeasure enterprise to protect Americans from bioterror or infectious health threats.” There are a number of elements to fighting biological threats. We know that the federal government is good at certain aspects of preparing for a pandemic or a biological attack—specifically, stockpiling needed materials. The federal government already has huge caches of countermeasures for a variety of challenges, including flu, anthrax, and smallpox. While the stockpiles are carefully placed around the country in the Strategic National Stockpile, the issue of distributing these countermeasures is one of the most difficult challenges that the federal government faces.
The Strategic National Stockpile was designed so that officials can direct bulk shipments of countermeasures anywhere in the country within 12 hours. But getting the materials distributed to individuals in a specific community is extremely difficult. For the last five years, the federal government has been experimenting with a variety of distribution methods. Here are some of our options for achieving the president’s goals.
