Re: Healthcare and partisan obstinacy

I think JT rightly acknowledges a feeling shared by many Americans on both sides of the aisle at this point: skepticism regarding the recently passed health care bill in spite of along-held desire to see some kind of major health care reform. This is an enormous bill and I don't think there is anyone who can say they are sure about exactly what affects it will have on American health care and other long-run issues like the deficit

In his response to my post Dante lays out a fairly complete and pretty reasonable framework for what effective health reform legislation could have entailed. He however fails to address what I see to be the central issue raised by the Economist quote I posted. Rather than proposing changes like those Dante himself proposes, Republican lawmakers refused to work with Democrats on this bill. I am not saying that all of the (likely numerous) flaws in this law which will become apparent in coming months and years can be blamed on Republican obstinacy. Democrats did plenty of squabbling among themselves and in the end produced an enormous bill that was even further complicated by massive amounts of pork. In my mind however, Republicans will have little right to criticize flaws in a law which they refused to contribute to i any meaningful way when it was a bill. Lawmakers who I used to respect as reasonable statesmen who did not let partisanship get in the way of their duty to run a country (specifically Jon McCain) are only making this problem worse with threats to refuse to cooperate on any legislation until the end of the year. That kind of behavior has certainly pushed this independent further away from the Republican Party.