Posts Tagged ‘national health Reform Obama’
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Rumors of the Death of National Health Reform are Greatly Exaggerated
By Tom Bunnell
Director, Institute for Health, Law & Ethics at Franklin Pierce Law Center
After a tumultuous August, there are a number of reasons why national health reform is still very much alive, prognostications of doom to the contrary.
Legislatively, health reform’s prospects are further along than ever before – four of five committees of jurisdiction in Congress already have approved comprehensive health reform bills. And the remaining policy differences (posturing to the contrary) are relatively narrow and far from irreconcilable.
But the most straightforward (albeit trouble-causing) explanation is purely political. Failure is not an option for Democrats who want to stay in power. Indeed, the shared fate of the Obama presidency and of the Democrats’ majority status in the US House and Senate appears increasingly likely to depend on the passage of health reform that works.
Read more »