Alternatives are fine - after Obamacare is repealed.

January 21, 2011

Krauthammer: Repeal not amend

Rick Moran
9 Comments

Charles Krauthammer , writing in IDB, points out the folly of "amending" Obamacare, attacking the numbers the Democrats fed the CBO to get their phony budget savings and the recommending a course of action: http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysi ... Reform.htm

That a health care reform law of such enormous size and consequence, revolutionizing one-sixth of the U.S. economy, could be sold on such flimflammery is astonishing, even by Washington standards. What should Republicans do?

Make the case. Explain the phony numbers, boring as the exercise may be. Better still, hold hearings and let the CBO director, whose integrity is beyond reproach, explain the numbers himself.

To be sure, the effect on the deficit is not the only criterion by which to judge Obama- Care. But the tossing around of such clearly misleading bumper-sticker numbers calls into question the trustworthiness of other happy claims about ObamaCare.

Such as the repeated promise that everyone who likes his current health insurance will be able to keep it. Sure, but only if your employer continues to offer it. In fact, millions of workers will find themselves adrift because their employers will have every incentive to dump them onto the public rolls.

This does not absolve the Republicans from producing a health care replacement. They will and should be judged by how well their alternative addresses the needs of the uninsured and the anxieties of the currently insured.

But amending an insanely complicated, contradictory, incoherent and arbitrary 2,000-page bill that will generate tens of thousands of pages of regulations is a complete nonstarter. Everything begins with repeal.

Indeed. Read the whole thing.

Hat Tip: Ed Lasky

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/201 ... amend.html