President Obama's Big Liberal Health Care Rout No One Noticed [View all]

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Below the Medicare "Doc Fix" Surface: President Obama's Big Liberal Health Care Rout No One Noticed

That most likely means that should Congress choose to offset this deficit increase, they are likely to come either from a further increase in taxes or payments (Republicans have crowed about this bill's provision raising the Medicare Part B rates on wealthier seniors, believing it would help shoot down public support for Medicare [fat chance]), or in cuts to other programs - and there the largest chunk of spending belongs to Defense.

Sure, they can try to cut the ACA or Medicaid later, but without being able to link it to the scary prospect of Medicare payments going down by 20% or a quarter, they will have a tough time justifying such cuts, and Democrats will have an easier time blocking them. They can try to raise the Medicare eligibility age, but they would have to allow the people in the gap to buy insurance through the Affordable Care Act, meaning they will end up making more people eligible for Obamacare! And, they would have to fund that too.

For these reasons, this was a pretty brilliant play on the part of the President and the Democrats. They used the doctors' lobby - which for some reason beyond my understanding often backs Republicans but have been seeking a permanent repeal of the SGR - to neutralize GOP threats against the two (count'em, two) other progressive priorities: Medicaid and Obamacare.

And oh, the law the President just signed also extends the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) for two more years. You will recall that one of the first things Barack Obama did when he became president was sign a massive expansion of CHIP.

So while the media is either ignoring the story altogether or huffing and puffing about the fact that it isn't mostly paid for, the legislation the President signed yesterday is a massive progressive rout on health care policy: it solved Medicare payments, protected Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act from a politically potent axe, and expanded CHIP. The Rigth simply got rolled (and you can tell they got rolled by the loud houls coming from the Right precisely because they didn't get to cut other health care programs into oblivion).

Well done, Democrats. Well done, Mr. President.

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