Mickey Kaus extracted the one nugget of good sense from this Nation article whining about how the Right made Obamacare fail:
In 2011, an Institute of Medicine committee was asked to clarify what the “essential health benefits” under the new law. The IOM recommended a package based on what the typical small business would cover, and noted the importance of such restraint to keep premiums low. It was a much more limited plan than many advocates support, and the committee was sharply criticized. But this month’s backlash underscores the wisdom of the IOM’s approach.
That above paragraph is important because one major reason why millions of people lost their health insurance is because the Obama administration demanded that insurance companies offer expanded essential health benefits. It would appear that the definition of ‘essential’ was then left up to progressive, liberal, and other Democratic activists with no real idea of what certain things cost, but certainly know how certain things make them feel. In situations like that you need hard-nosed people whose job it is to tell enthusiasts We can’t afford that or You can have this OR you can have that or just a simple, straightforward No.
Alas for the Obama administration, even in 2011 the labor pool for such a position was absolutely dominated by Republicans. And that leads to the great problem for this administration; so many of their problems arise from Barack Obama’s bull-headed, frankly stupid refusal to admit it when he’s made a disastrous mistake.
Moe Lane