Some reactions to president Obama’s health care reform proposal released February 22, 2010:
Keith Hennessey has a summary and analysis of possible political strategies behind it:
Somebody in the Administration put a lot of work into this proposal. It is extremely detailed, and it reads like a best effort to find a fair middle ground between two warring legislative bodies.
Cato Institute scholars have responded:
Michael Cannon on the headline at President Obama’s health reform site:
Alan Reynolds:
The President’s health care reform proposal is introduced by five bullet points, all of which are misleading at best.
The bullet points supposedly show that the proposal “puts American families and small business owners in control of their own health care.”
In reality, the proposal would put the federal government in control of health insurance (which is not at all the same as health care).
Read Reynolds’ point-by-point rebuttal to Obama’s health care plan.
Obama, CEO of America, Inc. So writes Roger Pilon at Politico:
Just where does President Obama think Congress finds the power to authorize the HHS secretary “to review, and to block, premium increases by private insurers, potentially superseding state insurance regulators”? …
No doubt Obama, a former lecturer in constitutional law, believes that the power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce suffices to allow it to set private heath insurance premiums. After all, once delegated to him, that same power allowed him, he believes, to take over auto companies, to fire corporate executives, to set their salaries, and to do, well, pretty much what he wanted in so many other areas. That’s the modern executive state — the president as CEO of America, Inc. The irony, however, is that the commerce power was given to Congress for precisely the opposite reason — to ensure economic liberty, not to restrict it.
