Scott Spiegel

In the event that the imminent failure of Democrats’ socialized medicine bill leads them to some soul-searching—perhaps listening to what their constituents have been telling them all summer, or taking GOP advice to start from scratch—it’s worth noting that House Republicans have introduced 32 health care reform bills since the spring, all languishing in the referral stage.

Many of these lonely bills deal with just one or several aspects of health care reform, rather than offering grand, sweeping Ten-Year Plans that will change Health Care As We Know It.  Not all the bills are knockouts; a couple are downright stinkers.  But virtually all contain some good ideas, and some of them contain nothing but good ideas—which means that no Democrat will ever for a moment consider any of them.

For those desiring ammunition to counterattack the liberal slander that conservatives criticize everything on health care they hear from Democrats but have no ideas of their own, here’s a primer on the legislation prepared by our devoted GOP servants in the House:

•    Several bills are flat-out winners, including Clifford Stearns’ Health Care Tax Deduction Act, Michele Bachmann’s Health Care Freedom of Choice Act, and Rodney Alexander’s Sunset of Life Protection Act.  These laws provide for income tax deductions of health insurance premiums and prescription drugs; medical expenses; and long-term care premiums, respectively.  That’s it.  All three bills are so short they could fit on a cocktail napkin together and still have room for a list of Obama’s failed Cabinet nominations.  This is not surprising: bills covering what individuals are allowed to do for themselves require less verbiage than bills mandating what individuals are required to do for their government.

•    Marsha Blackburn’s Health Care Choices for Seniors Act and Louis Gohmert’s Patient-Controlled Healthcare Protection Act allow seniors to opt out of Medicare and receive vouchers for health savings accounts, an arrangement analogous to school vouchers (another excellent idea liberals oppose).  Edward Royce’s Flexible Health Savings Act allows individuals to carry over unused health savings account funds from year to year.

•    John Shadegg’s Health Care Choice Act eliminates restrictions on interstate governing of health insurance, the primary cause of the limited within-state competition among private insurance companies that President Obama keeps bleating about.

•    Two bills—John Gingrey’s HEALTH Act and Michael Burgess’ Medical Justice Act—enact malpractice tort reform by regulating lawsuits for health care injuries or deaths.  William Thornberry’s Medical Liability Procedural Reform Act sets up state “health care tribunals” or medical courts to adjudicate claims.

•    Several unobjectionable but minor bills extend benefits for veterans, reserve members, and their dependents.

•    A few bills would amend the State Children’s Health Insurance Program to supposedly make it more accountable; however, these bills give the costly, bloated SCHIP so much legitimacy that I’m automatically suspicious of their authors’ credibility.

•    Other bills have good intentions but will lead to more bureaucracy and regulation than they aim to prevent; for example, Thornberry’s Health Care Paperwork Reduction and Fraud Prevention Act, which proposes a “Commission on Health Care Billing Codes and Forms Simplification” to standardize billing paperwork.  No doubt the government will first need to establish a separate commission just to simplify the Commission’s name.

•    Thornberry has proposed two more bad bills (why do public officials who want to meddle in our affairs always invent so many devious ways to do it?).  One is the Partnership to Improve Seniors’ Access to Medicare Act, which subsidizes student loan repayment for doctors who accept Medicare patients; not specified in the bill is how much of our bountiful federal surplus we’ll have to dip into to cover this provision.  Another is the Patient Fairness and Indigent Care Promotion Act, which allows doctors to deduct for tax purposes any unrecouped costs from “patient bad debt”—because nothing increases accountability like providing incentives for doctors not to check beforehand whether patients can pay their bills!

Other GOP bills contain additional provisions, and many of the bills are a mixed bag; but the point is that they’re all better than HR 3200, which is putrid right down to its last period.  Considering even a few key GOP bills over the next couple of years would be a sound way to address individual components of health care reform, in a piecemeal fashion, rather than upending our economy right this minute just because Democrats insist on artificial deadlines to maximize their political gain.

In the meantime, the proper response to any liberal who claims conservatives have no ideas of their own on health care reform should be a resounding, “You lie!”

President Obama is the opposite of Hamlet—he is desperately eager to do something on health care reform, right this minute, but he doesn’t particularly have any idea what it should be.

Obama spent most of July insisting that Congress had to pass a bill for him to sign before the August recess, in case they didn’t have enough political momentum by the time they got back.  Privately, Congressional Democrats fumed that Obama was offering no details on his preferred plan and was simply telling his spokespeople to assure them he would not rule out anything they decided.

Just before the recess, Obama got on TV for a Wednesday night address to the nation to “explain” the “details” of his “plan.”  The public’s reaction to his vague answers to reporters’ questions revealed as much frustration at his lack of specifics as Congress felt.

Since then, Obama has played “good cop, bad cop” with an unwilling Congress: Obama makes flowery promises—everyone who’s happy with the status quo can keep things as they are, everyone who’s unhappy can have everything completely different—while Congress is forced to work out the ugly details, like who’s going to pay for the plan.

At some point, Obama shifted away from his push for “health care reform” and began hinting that what he really wanted was “health insurance reform,” but he was too cowardly or indecisive to state his altered intention outright.

Obama similarly began to disavow the necessity of the public option when it became clear there were not enough votes in the Senate to pass a bill with one.  Rather than declare his switch in tactics openly, Obama implied that this had been his position all along, when he had clearly and repeatedly stated in the past that a public option would be necessary in order for him to sign a bill.  After the resulting backlash by House Democrats and Congressional leaders, Obama is once again on the fence about whether legislation must contain a public option or not.

Even New York Times columnists have been grumbling about Obama’s failure to make the case for health care reform.

As Bob Herbert complained, Obama “has been remarkably opaque about his intentions regarding health care.  He left it up to Congress to draft a plan and he has not gotten behind any specific legislation.  He has seemed to waffle on the public option and has not been at all clear about how the reform that is coming will rein in runaway costs.  At times it has seemed as though any old ‘reform’ would be all right with him.”

It’s obvious why dishonest politicians would choose to keep details of unpopular and impractical legislation vague in the early stages—i.e., to keep people from figuring out that it won’t work, will cost too much money, or will give the government greater control over our lives.  But at some point, leaders have to take a stand on what they will and will not tolerate, and let the chips fall where they may.  At  this point, Obama is acting as though he would be content to sign a phone book as long as the cover said “Health Care Reform Bill.”

Obama seems to think he can stay above the fray and maintain his popularity by not get involved in any messy details requiring those things we call “choices.”

But as Michael Barone notes, “The president must either insist on a ‘government option’ insurance plan or must let it be known that he will sign a bill without one…  Sooner or later the old politician’s dodge… won’t wash.”

Obama’s return-from-August-recess televised address to the nation Wednesday night is supposed to make it clear where he stands on the details of the various plans offered by Congress, after several months of hands-off cheerleading on his part.  But it’s obvious that things will be no clearer after his speech than before: his handlers are already scolding curious reporters for wanting to know specifics about what he’ll say and even whether the public will know where Obama stands on the public option after his address.

In a pre-speech interview today, Obama declared that “we do intend to get something done this year,” but hedged by saying that he was still “open to new ideas.”  Open to new ideas?  This is the same guy who demanded that Congress simply had to pass a comprehensive overhaul by the end of July?

Obama and his staffers are urgently motivated to do something, anything, on health care reform, so that they will be able to say that they did—something, anything.

The new test of liberal political ideology seems to be, not whether you favor Obama’s health care plan, but how long it takes you to realize what a disaster it is.

The American people were, as usual, first out of the gate to demonstrate their common-sense conservatism.  Although a slim majority voted for Obama in November, a growing preponderance has been telling pollsters they disapprove of the President and his handling of health care.   On Sunday, Rasmussen reported that Obama had reached a new low in their Presidential Approval Index, with health care one of his lowest-rated issues.

Like a teacher indulging a failing student’s pleas to find a way to give him extra points on his test, the Congressional Budget Office has spent all summer admonishing Obama for presenting legislation that will be more expensive than advertised, produce no savings, and yield expanding and unsustainable deficits for the next 10 years.  (“Now, Barry, I’ve already given you all the credit I can—next time you’ll just have to try harder.”)

The Mayo Clinic, which Obama cites as a model for cost-cutting measures, called the Medicare payment model proposed by Congress a “catastrophe.”

Seven state medical associations banded together with private medical societies and two previous AMA presidents in a letter to the President opposing the legislation.  The American Hospital Association is imploring hospital directors to counter Congress’s bill, as are specialty associations such as the American College of Physicians.

John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal cataloging the myriad flaws in Democrats’ proposal.

Sixty-thousand AARP members have cut up their cards since July over their leadership’s endorsement of Congress’s approach.  Though AARP supports the President’s general strategy, even they had to smack Obama down for claiming they had endorsed a bill when they had not yet done so.

After Obama insulted the Postal Service in his quest for a bill, the National Association of Postal Supervisors wrote Obama a letter expressing “our collective disappointment that you chose to use the Postal Service as a scapegoat …  [I]t was a kick to the chest to have you take a shot at a group of federal employees who are working hard every day to support this country.”

Pseudo-moderate network CNN recently chronicled “Five Freedoms You’d Lose in Health Care Reform,” including the freedom to negotiate details of your plan, cut costs by living healthier, choose a high-deductible plan, keep your current plan, and select your doctors.

The Associated Press fact-checked Obama’s claims and called him out for continuing to tell the same lies: e.g., if you like your health insurance, you can keep it—the implication being that you can keep it for as long as your employer and insurance company would otherwise have offered it without government health care, which is outlawed in Congress’s plan.

The Washington Post, no friend to conservatives, has been barraging readers with columns opposing ObamaCare.  Columnist David Hilzenrath affirmed that the administration would not be able to ensure that employees can keep the plans they have now.  Martin Feldstein explained that the 85% of Americans who now have insurance would pay higher taxes and receive fewer services.  Maya MacGuineas ridiculed the administration’s pledge that it can add an expensive new health care plan covering millions more Americans that will cost no extra and actually alleviate the budget deficit.

The Post’s editorial board also reminded the administration of the CBO’s harsh projections and warned him not to treat these lightly.  In a separate editorial, they scorned Democrats’ stubborn, mindless fixation on a public option.

Obama’s own Hyde Park doctor suggests that Congress’s legislation is worthless and adds of his patient, “I’m not sure he really understands what we face in primary care.”

In the workers’ paradise to our north, the current and incoming presidents of the Canadian Medical Association recently bemoaned the failures of Canada’s universal health care system, calling it “sick,” “precarious,” and “imploding,” and urged Canadian doctors to support free market reforms to the system.

The artist of the Obama “Joker” poster, Palestinian socialist and Dennis Kucinich supporter Firas Alkhateeb, admitted, “[Y]ou had all of these people who basically saw him as the second coming of Christ.  From my perspective, there wasn’t much substance to him.”

Air America host Christiane Brown decried Obama’s reversal of his promise not to bar negotiation for lower drug prices, then purred, “He’s such a charming liar, though.  He’s such a nice guy when he lies like that.”

On Sunday, Senator Joe Lieberman, who caucuses with Democrats, said he’s changed his mind on proposed legislation and urges postponing it until the economy recovers.

Now The New York Times has gotten on the bandwagon; you might say they finally have some “skin in the game.”  Times reporter David Pear reported a few days ago that there is, after all, a legitimate basis for elderly Americans’ fear that legislation will lead to rationing of health care.

Paul Krugman criticized the President’s priorities, belittled his dwindling ability to inspire confidence, and lamented that “his speeches and op-eds still read as if they were written by a committee.”

Bob Herbert scolded Obama for not explaining why a gargantuan new government program is in our country’s interest in the middle of a recession: “Many sane and intelligent people who voted for Mr. Obama… have legitimate concerns about the timing of this health reform initiative…  [He] has not been at all clear about how the reform that is coming will rein in runaway costs…  [P]eople are starting to lose faith in the president.”

I’m glad the Times is finally starting to see the light on Obama’s executive inexperience and his disastrous agenda.  Maybe now millions of Middle Americans who hang on Krugman and Herbert’s every word will develop more confidence in expressing their opposition at all those town hall meetings I keep hearing about.

The pile of victims President Obama has thrown under the bus in his attempts to get health care reform passed is growing so large that just treating their internal injuries is going to bankrupt the national health care system.

First it was the insurance companies.  When Obama realized early on that Americans weren’t chomping at the bit for socialized medicine, he subtly changed his language to imply that he was merely seeking “health insurance reform.”  Insurance companies, to remind Obama, by definition have a vested interest in not covering costly treatments for people with a 100% risk of having a particular medical condition.  But the administration nobly promised to go after, as the New York Times put it, “unpopular insurance industry practices, like refusing patients with pre-existing conditions”—also known as “providing insurance.”

Nancy Pelosi swore to oppose the “shock and awe, carpet-bombing by the health insurance industry to perpetuate the status quo”—as opposed to the couple, two-three homemade signs proffered by paid armies for Health Care for America Now, Organizing for America, SEIU, and ACORN.  Obama promised to “reform the insurance companies so they can’t take advantage of you.”  Pelosi slandered insurance companies as “villains.”

Surprisingly, insurance executives didn’t take kindly to being called monsters.  Karen Ignagni, CEO of America’s Health Insurance Plans, seethed, “Attacking our community will not help get anyone covered…  We have to… correct the record.”

Next it was the pharmaceutical industry: in June, Obama twisted drug companies’ arms into forking over $80 billion toward health care reform, on the condition that the government would not bargain for reduced drug prices for Medicare or mandate price rebates.  Industry lobbyists, just to make sure they weren’t going to be stabbed in the back like the insurance companies, wrote the White House and secured confirmation from White House officials that these promises would be kept.

Congressional Democrats heard about these communications and had a fit.  The administration subsequently claimed that no such conditions had ever been discussed.  One of the House versions of the bill emerged containing provisions mandating both government drug price negotiations and additional price rebates.

Obama then started sacrificing groups less directly involved in health care but assumed to be shoo-in supporters of his agenda.  First he falsely claimed that AARP had endorsed Congress’s health care legislation: “We have the AARP on board” and “AARP would not be endorsing a bill if it was undermining Medicare.”  AARP’s terse response: “Indications that we have endorsed any of the major health care reform bills currently under consideration in Congress are inaccurate.”

Then Obama tossed 760,000 U.S. Post Office employees in the street when he argued that private health insurers wouldn’t be threatened by a public option: “If you think about it, UPS and FedEx are doing just fine.  It’s the post office that’s always having problems.”

The President of the National Association of Postal Supervisors responded to this charming occupational morale booster by sending Obama a letter asking him to rescind his comments: “On behalf of the 35,000 members of our association, I am writing to express our collective disappointment that you chose to use the Postal Service as a scapegoat…  [Y]our negative references to the Postal Services without knowledge of the facts was a disservice… to all postal employees…  [I]t was a kick to the chest to have you take a shot at a group of federal employees who are working hard every day to support this country…  [W]e would like to be treated fairly and not have our current situation misrepresented, especially by the Commander-in-Chief.”

Such Obama tactics recall his disastrous health care forum last month, in which he planted a question about Cambridge Police Department Sergeant James Crowley’s arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., which gave Obama the chance to change the subject and denigrate blue-collar Massachusetts police officers who support him.  As department member Sergeant Kelly King stated after Obama declared that her department had acted “stupidly”: “It’s unfortunate.  I supported the president.  I voted for him.  I will not again.”

Obama even threw his dead grandmother under the bus—again.  When Sarah Palin charged that proposed legislation would lead to death panels that ration health care and decide which old people are not worth saving, Obama said he had favored his grandmother’s hip operation while she was alive, but could understand how a government panel might have calculated otherwise.

Unlike insurance companies, drug companies, the AARP, the post office, and the police, Obama’s grandmother couldn’t respond to his delightful remarks.  Would Obama have dared use that example if she were alive and in need of the operation?  Why doesn’t he try using it on seniors at townhall meetings who are in need of costly treatments?  “I’d pay for your operation if I were your relative, but I can see how a government panel made up of people you don’t know might feel otherwise.”

The latest Obama special interest group to be Greyhounded is House Democrats.  In June, Obama declared, “Any plan I sign must include an insurance exchange… including a public option.”  On Sunday, Obama demurred, “The public option, whether we have it or we don’t have it, is not the entirety of health care reform.”  Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius insisted that a public option, which House Democrats heavily favor, is “not the essential element” of the plan.  Why, whatever gave you that idea?  Was it perhaps inclusion of the ambiguous word “must”?

Predictably, House Democrats have not accepted this about-face without a fight.  According to New York Representative Anthony Weiner, “Some of us who have gotten roughed up pretty good at town hall meetings and stuck in there because we believe in this, now kind of feel like we have a tire track on our chest where the bus that rolled over us is.”

Fortunately, House Democrats are the one party in all of this who deserve to be thrown under the bus—which is probably why the administration is already backtracking on their disavowal of the public option.

Senator Barbara Boxer recently declared that, before the current round of town hall meetings on health care reform, the last time she had seen such suspiciously well-dressed protestors was during the 2000 Florida election recount.  Well, yes—until Obama’s presidency, that’s the last time Republicans showed up en masse to get really angry about something; screaming and chanting are political tactics more naturally suited to the left.

As for the couture angle—here’s a newsflash for Boxer: Republicans have higher standards than Democrats.  A typical left-wing protest involves twenty-somethings and washed-up hippies in ratty T-shirts and shredded jeans breaking windows at a local Starbucks during the midmorning rush.

The average right-wing protest—invariably held in the evening, since attendees have jobs in the daytime—involves adults who dress as though they would like to elevate community standards, not degrade them.  Participants address their concerns directly to those in power, such as legislators, rather than assailing defenseless third parties, such as coffee franchise employees.  The fact that most conservative protestors come directly from work may explain why they wear suits and skirts, but apparently Senate Democrats believe opinions are valid only if expressed by people sporting Birkenstocks and buttons urging presidential assassinations.

When Boxer and other Congressional Democrats realized that Americans don’t view “well-dressed” as an epithet, they moved in the opposite direction: they claimed that the protestors were scruffy rabble-rousers after all.  House Leader Nancy Pelosi insisted that she had seen demonstrators “carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on healthcare.”  Translation: One protestor had a swastika with a slash through it, and others were displaying American flags and ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ banners—you know, symbols like swastikas.

Saddling protestors with the “brownshirt” label didn’t work, so Obama’s Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina warned Democrats who were planning town hall meetings, “If you get hit… punch back twice as hard.”

Evidently some representatives took this message literally: at a town hall meeting in Ohio, Representative Russ Carnahan hired union organizers to deny entry to citizens who looked as though they might oppose health care reform legislation, several of whom were promptly mauled by union thugs and sent to the hospital.  Outside, black conservative Kenneth Gladney was racially slandered and physically attacked and sent to the emergency room by an unidentified opponent for handing out ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ flags.  Protestors were also roughed up at a meeting held by Florida Representatives Kathy Castor and Betty Reed.

Naturally, Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid’s response to this onslaught of leftist violence and intimidation was… to blame Republicans for not minding their manners.  Reid accused protesters of attempting to “sabotage” the process; he said, “These are nothing more than destructive efforts to interrupt a debate…  They are doing this because they don’t have any better ideas.”

Well, yes, actually, we do have one or two, which you may not have heard, because we’ve only been ranting about them for the past, oh, two decades: malpractice tort reform, Medicare reform, health savings accounts, healthcare tax credits, vouchers for private insurance, and pay for performance.  More generally, competition in the private market for health insurance, and individual autonomy regarding level and type of coverage and risk tolerance.  Other than that, we’re flush out of ideas!

In an effort to quell dissatisfaction among constituents, Democrats in Congress finally decided to listen to town hall participants’ ideas and give thoughtful responses that address their concerns.  Just kidding!  The latest tactics being employed by congressmen across the nation are: (1) showing up at town hall meetings, reciting a few talking points, claiming the crowd is too boisterous when they open their mouths, and leaving; (2) announcing meetings at the last minute in the hope that no one will attend; and (3) holding “virtual” town hall meetings.

For example, Representative Kathy Castor’s spokeswoman defended Castor’s abbreviated appearance in Florida by stating, “We said all along our role was to come and give an update on the bill in Congress…  [T]hat’s what we did.”  And that’s what websites are for.

Michigan Representative John Dingell waited to announce last Thursday’s 6pm town hall meeting until Thursday morning.  Word of mouth spread throughout the day, however, and that evening Dingell faced hundreds of constituents who were not impressed by his deceitful maneuver.

At least Castor and Dingell showed up in person; other congressmen, such as Representative Brian Baird of Washington, are planning virtual meetings with constituents.  According to The Columbian, “If you happen to be sitting near a publicly listed Clark County telephone line on the right day at the right time, your phone will ring…  [T]he exact date and time will be kept secret from the public…  [A]n automated message will ask whether you have a question…  Sitting at his own telephone at an as-yet-undisclosed location, Baird then will choose a name based on its location and the topic…  After the call is over, the recording will be posted on his Web site.”

Baird helpfully notes that this system will allow for “a much better cross-section of the public,” by which he means “a cross-section of the public that is not knowledgeable or concerned enough to attend a town hall meeting.”  Note to Baird: There’s a reason they’re called “town hall meetings,” not “prescreened anonymous secret one-way teleconference recordings.”

In the end, some congressmen have decided to simply give up on their constituents.  New York Representative Tim Bishop chose to suspend town hall meetings in his district until late August—you know, when just everyone will be around—because he concluded there was no point in facing an “unruly mob.”  Senator Claire McCaskill similarly issued a last-minute cancellation of a scheduled event due to “safety” concerns.

In the same way that Democrats denigrate protestors who adhere to a “No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service” standard, they have sunk to a new low: projecting their party’s historic propensity for mob rule and violent agitprop onto frail, elderly grandparents in bowties and cardigans.

The eagle-eyed sleuths at Investor’s Business Daily recently dug up a nefarious provision in the House’s 1,018-page health care bill that prohibits you from keeping your current private insurance if any changes are made to it.

On p. 16.

This, in a bill whose table of contents and “general definitions” run to p. 14.  So the House has written a bill whose key, most egregious proviso is hidden so poorly that the authors apparently assumed the public couldn’t be bothered to click two pages to get to it.

Evidently this was too much work for President Obama, whose response during a news conference on Monday at Children’s Hospital to a concerned caller from Maine asking if he was interpreting the stipulation correctly was, “You know, I have to say that I am not familiar with the provision you are talking about.”  What part of the bill is Obama familiar with—the cover?

But don’t worry—Obama says, “If you like your health plan, you can keep it.”  He sure doesn’t know any differently!

In Section 102—that is, the second part of the first section, two pages into the bill—ironically titled, “Protecting the Choice to Keep Current Coverage,” the bill puts the following limitation on those who wish to eschew government-approved options and keep their own coverage: “[T]he individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage [must] not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day of Y1.”

So it turns out that if you like your health plan, you can keep it—as long as you don’t start liking your health plan on or after the first day of Y1!

The subsequent clause, which discusses dependents, helpfully notes that if you’re sick of your current individual plan and want to switch to a different plan, you still can’t—but the government will be nice enough to let you enroll new dependents under that plan you hate!

Following this is a clause that graciously requires that after five years, “an employment-based health plan in operation as of the day before the first day of Y1 must meet the same requirements as apply to a qualified health benefits plan.”

So we’ve unearthed yet another loophole in the first 1% of the bill: if you like the health plan you have, and you happen to get it from your employer, which includes 62% of the population under 65, you can keep it—except that after five years, you can’t!

But don’t expect Obama to be familiar with that provision, either—after all, it’s buried deep into the third page of text in the bill.

After you burrow your way through the labyrinthine textual warrens of pages 17-19, you’ll learn that “qualified” plans may not exclude anyone on the basis of preexisting condition.  On p. 21, the bill mandates that premiums may not vary at all, except by age, state, and family size; and that the highest-to-lowest premium ratio by age group may not be more than 2-to-1.

According to these conditions, a 40-year-old who has chosen to smoke two packs of cigarettes a day his whole life and has contracted lung cancer could end up being charged as little as half the rate of a perfectly healthy non-smoking 60-year-old, just because the 60-year-old is older and has chosen not to smoke.  “Health Choices Act” indeed!

Several years ago, when it was revealed that audience members in Oprah Winfrey’s infamous Great Car Giveaway would have to fork over $7,000 each in taxes, the winners at least had the option to sell the car to pay the taxes and keep the difference—or forfeit the car altogether.

H.R. 3200 isn’t so generous—according to the bill, those who are not in a health plan the government finds acceptable will be fined the full cost of the average plan for their family size.  In other words, you can’t refuse to pay for government-approved health insurance for you and your family, whether you even want or receive it or not.

Rasmussen recently reported that Democrats’ perceived trust advantage over Republicans in the area of health care plummeted from 18 percentage points in May to 4 points in June.  No wonder Obama is racing to get this legislation through Congress before they go to August recess: at the current rate, Republicans will be leading on health care by 38 points come September.

In his speech at Children’s Hospital, Obama intoned, “There are some in this town who are content to perpetuate the status quo, are in fact fighting reform on behalf of powerful special interests.”

There are some around this country who are fighting “reform” on behalf of liberty.