The Doc Is In

… “President Barack Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid are preparing to begin the reconciliation process after next week’s bipartisan White House health care summit. “They are coming out of the summit guns-a-blazing and they’re committed to reconciliation,” said one Democratic insider. …. “It’s going to cause political problems.” Not the least of which is how Democrats pivot to reconciliation, a procedure Republicans view as a partisan ramrod, shortly after Obama hosts the GOP to talk about bipartisan solutions. Right now, Democratic leaders are considering a $200 billion reconciliation bill that includes more affordability subsidies, the union-tweaked Cadillac tax and filling in the gap in seniors’ drug coverage, which would be paid for primarily by additional Medicare cuts and an increase in Medicare payroll taxes above those in the Senate bill, an insider said.” ….

“The Obama administration and congressional Democrats made clear that, rather than turn to voters’ economic concerns in this winter of discontent, they want to persist in pushing the health care proposals they have championed for a year—proposals voters have rejected by every means at their disposal, from expressing (a still growing) opposition in polls, to scolding members of Congress in town hall meetings, to handing Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat to a Republican.

It is now clear that the “summit” the president has called for February 25 is not intended to consider different approaches to health care financing, but rather to create an illusion of momentum that might just lull disoriented congressional Democrats into ramming the health care bill through the budget reconciliation process.

Leading up to the summit, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and White House officials aim to produce a bill that bridges not the yawning gap between Democratic and Republican proposals but the technical differences between House and Senate Democrats. The House and Senate bills do differ on some issues—a government insurance plan, the details of tax increases and Medicare cuts—but they agree on the big picture, which would be the essence of a combined bill: a massively ambitious, costly, intrusive, inefficient, and clumsy combination of mandates, taxes, subsidies, regulations, and new government programs intended over time to replace the American health insurance industry with an enormous federal entitlement while failing to address the rising costs at the heart of our health care dilemma.

It would raise taxes in a tough economic time, cut Medicare benefits without putting the program on a sustainable footing, create a new open-ended entitlement as we confront daunting deficits, and displace the insurance arrangements of millions.” ….