Is Obama secretly the greatest Republican ever?

[Freeper]

kpete Donating Member (1000+ posts)  Journal Click to send private message to this author Click to view this author's profile Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list    Mon Jun-20-11 07:09 PM
Original message
Is Obama secretly the greatest Republican ever?   Updated at 7:09 PM
   
Edited on Mon Jun-20-11 07:13 PM by kpete
Posted at 06:50 AM ET, 06/20/2011
Wonkbook: Is Obama secretly the greatest Republican ever?
By Ezra Klein

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If Republicans can make their peace with the Affordable Care Act and help figure out how to make the Affordable Care Act's exchanges work to control costs and improve quality, it'd be natural to eventually migrate Medicaid and Medicare into the system. Liberals would like that because it'd mean better care for Medicaid beneficiaries and less fragmentation in the health-care system. Conservatives would like it because it'd break the two largest single-payer health-care systems in America and turn their beneficiaries into consumers. But the implementation and success of the Affordable Care Act is a necessary precondition to any compromise of this sort. You can't transform Medicaid and Medicare until you've proven that what you're transforming them into is better. Only the Affordable Care Act has the potential to do that.

So Bachmann is perhaps right to say that the president is moving us towards a day when ObamaCare -- or, to put it more neutrally, "premium support" -- might come to Medicare. He's seeing whether it works in the private health-care market first and, if it does, there's little doubt that the political pressure to extend it to other groups will be intense. The question is why Bachmann and her party are doing so much to stand in his way? The corollary to Bachmann's accusation that the president has a realistic plan to privatize Medicare is that the Republicans, for all their sound and fury over the Ryan budget, don't.

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MORE:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/won...
One thing's for sure. Bachman's on to something. I knew her comments had a perverse sort of logic, but it never occurred to me that she was right on the merits. Live and learn.
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/bachmans-right-a...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1334474

 

Maru Kitteh Donating Member (1000+ posts)  Journal Click to send private message to this author Click to view this author's profile Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list    Mon Jun-20-11 07:21 PM
Response to Original message
7. ALERTED. I'm sure you've at least a cursory understanding of the rules.

 

[miskie]

Osama Obama - Secret Republican Superstar !

[USA4ME]

How nutso do you have to be to believe Dear Leader is interested in privatizing Medicare?  Ezra Klein (of  JournoList fame) is a kook.

.

[franksolich]

I don't think my fellow Nebraskan, the one who has problems bending so as to sit down on the commode, should've alerted on the kaput primitive's, the kpete primitive's thread.

Perhaps my fellow Nebraskan isn't aware the kaput primitive's one of them who lives in an extra-posh gated community in San Diego, and is a major contributor to Skins's island.

[Ballygrl]

Hey, he belongs to you guys, don't be trying to pawn him off on us.

[I_B_Perky]

By Ezra Klein

I quit reading after I saw this.

[GOBUCKS]

If Republicans can make their peace with the Affordable Care Act and help figure out how to make the Affordable Care Act's exchanges work to control costs and improve quality, it'd be natural to eventually migrate Medicaid and Medicare into the system.

Calling Obamacare the "Affordable Care Act" is as sure a sign of a raving moonbat as calling where we live "the planet".

[true_blood]

kpete Donating Member (1000+ posts)    Mon Jun-20-11 07:09 PM
Original message
Is Obama secretly the greatest Republican ever?   Updated at 7:09 PM

Hey kpete, this is just for you!