There is bipartisan opposition to President Obama’s health care plans from governors. They see the writing on the wall and know Obamacare will explode the budgets in their already cash-strapped states. Obamacare is such a bummer we can call it Obummercare.
Although many governors said significant change in how the nation handles health care was needed, they said their deep-seated fiscal troubles made it a terrible time to shift costs to the states. With the recession draining states of tax revenues even as their Medicaid rolls are surging, the National Governors Association projects that states will face aggregate deficits of $200 billion over the next three years.
Each of several health care bills coursing through Congress relies on a large increase in eligibility for Medicaid, the state and federal insurance program for the poor, as one means of moving toward universal coverage.
Because the states and the federal government share the cost, any increase in eligibility levels, benefits or payments to doctors would impose new burdens on the states unless Washington absorbs them. In at least one of several bills circulating in Congress, the states would eventually pick up a share of the new costs, and the governors fear they cannot count on provisions in other bills that they will not bear costs.
It isn’t just the states’ governors dismayed by Obummercare. Many of the so-called Blue Dog Democrats in the House aren’t on board. They know voting for Pelosi’s bill would be political suicide.
Some centrist House Democrats have reached out to Republicans to explore breaking with their party leadership on healthcare and crafting a reform bill with the rival GOP, one congressman claimed Saturday.
Rep. Charles Boustany (R-La.) asserted that an “interesting development” is taking place underway that, if true, could effectively remove Democratic leadership from the driver’s seat on healthcare reform legislation in the House.
“There’s an interesting development occurring behind the scenes, wherein moderate Democrats — so-called “Blue Dog” Democrats — and business-friendly new Democrats are actually starting to have conversations with us to build a coalition from the center outward, to actually really come up with substantive and well-founded healthcare reform,” Boustany said during an appearance on Fox News. “And that’s the only way to do this.”
The DNC plans to run ads in their districts to try to keep them in line.
Declare a crisis, dream up a big government takeover, then scream that the new “crisis” will become horribly wporse unless some terrible thing is done right now, like slamming another 1000 page bill through Congress in 10 minutes, making sure that nobody , in or out of Congress, has time to read it until the damage is done. Never let a crisis go to waste, even if you have to create the appearance of the “crisis”.
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