It’s a long way from Vancouver, but there there was an Olympian clash at the White House guest cabana Thursday, and despite the cloudy outlook, conditions didn’t result in a debilitating outbreak of bipartisanship. So, who were the big winners and losers of Health Care Brouhaha of 2010? Let’s first focus on the man in the middle of it all:
“Obama controlled the microphone and the clock, and he used both skillfully to limit the Republicans’ time, to rebut their arguments and to always have the last word,” writes Dana Milbank of The Washington Post. “The forum matched his lawyerly skills … Prof. Obama ventured deep into the weeds of health-care policy to contest Republican claims, and, for one day at least, he regained control of the fractious student body that is the Congress.”
Good for Obama for asking Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) if he would really rather have catastrophic care than comprehensive health coverage. Barrasso said it would lead him to be a better health-care consumer, which makes you wonder whether Barrasso will agree to dump what he now has. But Obama then made the central point of the whole day. Speaking of the uninsured, he said: “We can debate whether we can afford to help them. We can’t say they don’t need help.”
Dionne also thinks that, to some extent, the president and the rest of us should live in the past: “Tonight, please call Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and apologize for all the bad things you said about her mandate proposal during the campaign. She was right about this issue. You should tell her so.”
Source : http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/26/health-cares-clash-of-the-titans/
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