Democrats backing away from Obama Care!?

Senate Democrats try to dodge responsibility for ObamaCare.

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By JAMES TARANTO

"Powerful Democrats" subjected a top Obama administration health-care official "to withering criticism" last week, notes Walter Russell Mead. When Gary Cohen, head of the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight, appeared before the Senate Finance Committee, chairman Max Baucus of Montana and Sens. Ron Wyden (Ore.), Bill Nelson (Fla.) and Maria Cantwell (Wash.) "tore into him."

 The hearing didn't attract much journalistic attention; the only stories we could find about it were from a legislative trade publication (the Hill) and a health-policy one (Kaiser Health News) (Z:  SURPRISE!). Here's a summary of the senators' complaints:

"Baucus questioned how well the online health insurance marketplaces would interact with what he called 'archaic' computer systems at Social Security and the Internal Revenue Service," Kaiser reports.

Cantwell, the Hill reports, "criticized the administration for delaying implementation of the Basic Health Program--an option for states to provide cost-efficient health coverage outside of Medicaid and the law's new insurance exchanges." It was supposed to start next year but the administration is delaying it until 2015. Cantwell asked Cohen: "Are you artificially raising the cost to all taxpayers by trying to lure them onto the exchange?" (Cohen said no, the Basic Health Plan, in the Hill's paraphrase, "simply had to take a backseat to other priorities.")

"Wyden pressed Cohen to help find ways to resolve a glitch in the law which may result in the denial of federal assistance to millions of Americans of modest means who could be priced out of family health coverage at work," according to Kaiser. At issue is an IRS ruling limiting federal subsidies for such plans. Said Wyden: "We've got millions of people--working-class, middle-class people--who are going to be pushed into a regulatory health coverage no man's land." So much for President Obama's promise that if you like your plan, you can keep it.(Z: by the way...Anybody with bat brains knew this was a lie;  if I have Blue Cross and Blue Cross goes out of business because companies find it cheaper to go for Obama Care, will I be able to keep Blue Cross!?  Of course not..and who didn't know this?)

And Nelson "hammered" the Department of Health and Human Services "for inviting Congress to cut funding for a new nonprofit insurance model," as the Hill puts it:

Funding for healthcare co-ops was eliminated in the year-end tax deal, and Nelson said officials offered up the program as a place Congress could cut.

"Why was that negotiated away at the 11th hour?" Nelson asked.

Cohen didn't have an answer.

Nelson noted that the co-ops funding was axed while applications for new co-ops were still in the pipeline. HHS had already approved a few new [sic] of them.

"I want somebody to be accountable for this, and if it was a mistake, for somebody to own up to it," Nelson said.

If we're going to hold people accountable, how about starting with Bill Nelson, who was among the 89 senators voting "yes" on the tax deal? Maybe that's not entirely fair, since Nelson might have been unaware of that provision, and the expiration, less than two hours earlier, of the Bush tax cuts put genuine pressure on lawmakers to act quickly. Still, it's odd for a member of Congress to be faulting the administration for a position it took in negotiating with Congress, rather than faulting himself and his colleagues for enacting a law whose provisions he doesn't like.

The other three senators have no excuse whatever. If the law is impracticable to implement, or if it gives too much discretion to executive-branch agencies like the IRS or the HHS, these problems could have been anticipated if lawmakers had not been so anxious to ram the bill through. Any single Democrat who was a member of the Senate in December 2009--including Baucus, Cantwell, Nelson and Wyden--could have single-handedly halted the process simply by joining the 40 Republicans in declining to approve a vote on the floor. Instead, every last one of them yielded to political pressure and voted "yes."

"Democrats are getting nervous and consequently are trying to put some distance between themselves and the ACA," Mead observes, using the abbreviated formal styling of ObamaCare as the Affordable Care Act. "We don't blame them for trying, but it may be a futile effort. For better or worse, their fates are now tied to that of Obamacare." (Z; and so are ours)

Indeed there isn't much point in blaming them for trying. But they deserve the blame for imposing this monstrosity on the country. To quote Bill Nelson: "I want somebody to be accountable for this, and if it was a mistake, for somebody to own up to it." (Z: so do WE, Mr. Democrat who voted for this nightmare...SO DO WE)

Z's QUESTION: Will it EVER be possible NOT to have OBAMA CARE?   Can ANYTHING be done if even DEMOCRATS are finally getting the smell of the whole thing?

Z