Category Archives: Economic Policy: Health Care

The Best Alternative to Obamacare | USNews.com | 07.09.12

“Repeal and replace” has become the GOP slogan for how to deal with President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, now that the Supreme Court has declined to declare unconstitutional the unprecedented U.S. government takeover of one-sixth of the economy. But replace it with what? In fact a plan has been circulating on Capitol Hill for [...]
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How Chief Justice John Roberts Decoded Obamacare | HughHewitt.com | 07.02.12

Whatever else it did or didn’t do, Chief Justice John Roberts’s Obamacare opinion had the effect of cutting away major deceptions and hypocrisies surrounding the president’s health industry takeover legislation. For from the first, the administration has attempted to protect the truth about the 2,700-page Affordable Care Act with – in Winston Churchill’s characterization of [...]
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The Supreme Court and a Plan for Replacing Obamacare, Whatever the Court Decides | HughHewitt.com | 03.26.12

Today the Supreme Court begins hearing three days of arguments on the constitutionality of Obamacare, officially known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.  For the rest of us, the arguments have been going nonstop since the program was signed into law in March 2010. In a particularly succinct posting this morning (http://tinyurl.com/6sl3yfw ), [...]
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A Titanic Struggle Begins | HughHewitt.com | 03.29.10

All through the health care debate, the Administration and Democratic leaders in Congress promised wavering members that all would be right once they passed the bill. Starting almost immediately, the American people would see that the legislation delivered more and cost less than anyone thought.  And they would respect the majority party’s show of strength. [...]
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The Smart Money was Right | HughHewitt.com | 03.22.10

The smart money was right.  The health overhaul bill has now passed both houses of Congress.  When the President signs it later in the week, it will be law. At around four o’clock yesterday, Michigan Democrat Bart Stupak and the White House announced a deal on right to life.  The health overhaul effectively repeals the [...]
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Betting Against the Smart Money | HughHewitt.com | 03.15.10

As the week begins, the smart money in Washington is betting that the House will adopt the Senate health care package and send it to the President by week’s end. Count me skeptical. The postponement of the President’s Far Eastern trip was a sign of White House anxiety that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi could not [...]
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Amateur Hour in our “Ungovernable” Government | HughHewitt.com | 03.08.10

A great deal of talk has come out of Washington these last few weeks about the nation being “ungovernable.”  What that means, of course, is that the White House can’t find sixty votes for health care overhaul in a senate that their party controls by sixty votes.  So they are pushing the legislation through using [...]
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Republicans, Conservative Democrats, the Health Care Summit, and American Exceptionalism | HughHewitt.com | 03.01.10

“Blue Dogs want health care to come up again,” said a long-time veteran of the House in a closed door briefing last Monday.   “So they can vote against it.” Many conservative Democratic members of Congress cast their ballots for the bill last time – and those who did not are widely seen as part of [...]
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Health Summit Starting Point: Ban Three Bad Ideas | HughHewitt.com | 02.09.10

How bad have the last few weeks been for Mr. Obama’s White House? You can keep the score in headlines and magazine covers. Covers?  My favorite is The New Yorker’s, with the President in three cartoon panels walking across the water.  In the fourth he’s falling in. Headlines?  Take this one from Monday’s Washington Post, [...]
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The March of the Senate Democrats | HughHewitt.com | 12.21.09

As one early morning report puts it, the Senate is now “marching” to passage on Christmas Eve of its version of health overhaul.  Three motions preliminary to a cloture vote have passed 60-40, all Democrats for, all Republicans against.  What does this Democrats-only bill do?  What are the consequences? As it stands today, the health [...]
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Reviewing the Health Overhaul Bidding | HughHewitt.com | 11.09.09

Let’s review the bidding now that Obama/Pelosicare has passed the House. As reported here two weeks ago, according to one of the nation’s leading experts on the federal budget, former OBM deputy director and Hoover Institution economist John Cogan, by mid century without the president’s agenda, the federal spending including Medicare and Medicaid are on [...]
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“Affordability”, 2010 and the Health Overhaul | HughHewitt.com | 10.26.09

This morning’s Politico (here: http://tinyurl.com/yf8pchm ) headlines “Public Option resurfaces as an affordability issue”.  In the paper version, a bigger headline to the same story explains, “2010 Haunts Health Care Debate”. You may be inclined to say, “duh.”  But though, as Politico also reports, Mr. Obama’s demand for a $900 billion cap on the planned [...]
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Conservative Hot Spots in Liberal San Francisco Bay Area Lead Consumer-Driven Health Reform | HughHewitt.com | 10.19.09

The San Francisco Bay Area is, of course, a Mecca of American left liberalism.  But unnoticed throughout the rest of the nation, it is also nurturing ground for free-market intellectuals and home to two major institutions for free-market economic and political thought, the Hoover Institution and the Pacific Research Institute. On Friday night former presidential [...]
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Questions for the President Tonight | HughHewitt.com | 09.09.09

When he stands before Congress tonight, the president will almost certainly replace his demand for an immediate “public option” (government-provided insurance plan) with endorsement of a so-called “trigger.”  Under his new plan, failure of health insurers to reduce their rates in some period – probably five years – will “trigger” a public option. His implication [...]
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Wednesday’s Speech Won’t Hit Reset Button for Obamacare | HughHewitt.com | 09.07.09

Washington is in a state of something approaching suspended animation this Labor Day weekend. With the president scheduled to address a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, the DC power game is in time out, waiting to hear what Mr. Obama has to say on that brightest stage of American political theater: the joint session [...]
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With ObamaCare in a Hole, Will the White House Stop Digging? | HughHewitt.com | 09.02.09

Increasingly in Washington over the last few weeks, we have heard this assessment of the president’s health care upheaval prospects: Something will pass, because the president and his party have such large majorities (nearly 60 percent) in both chambers of Congress that it is inconceivable that they could not bludgeon their way to the necessary [...]
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Where Does White House Health Overhaul Policy Go Now? | HughHewitt.com | 08.31.09

On Sunday the Rasmussen organization reported that 42 percent of likely voters had told them they strong disapprove of the president’s job performance.  At this rate it is not out of the question that the new year could see this number break the 50 percent mark. The record strong disapproval – which also must set [...]
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Health care too important to be a partisan issue | Orlando Sentinel | 09.14.08

Ever since Franklin Roosevelt first considered including universal health coverage as part of the Social Security Act of 1935, America has seen five attempts to overhaul our federal health system. All have one thing in common: They ended in failure. With eight weeks to go in the presidential campaign, there are signs that this time [...]
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Let Consumers Pull the Health-Care Purse Strings | Wall Street Journal | 09.26.89

Some issues get rolling and there’s no stopping them. A case in point is national health insurance, growing in popularity in policy circles even as the nation’s elderly cry for relief from the catastrophic burden of federal catastrophic care insurance. Now, in New York, the Cuomo team has barged into the act. David Axelrod, the [...]
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