Barack Obama

Why A President Romney Would Find It Hard To Repeal 'Obamacare'

Brian Beutler | January 18, 2012, 5:27AM

Mitt Romney

Should he win the nomination and the presidency, then on inauguration day in 2013, after all the pageantry has subsided, Mitt Romney will face a key test: does he take aggressive action to roll back Obamacare as he and every other GOP contender has promised? Or will he accede to pragmatic realities and seek detente with Democrats on the issue that has most divided the parties over the past three years?

The amount of money, strategizing, myth-making, and political capital that Republicans have already thrown at the health care law will make it very difficult for Romney or any GOP President not to enter office with guns blazing. But many of the would-be policy makers who have made dismantling the law their top priority haven't given any real thought to how, mechanically, to unwind it. A closer look reveals that chipping away at Obamacare, or even repealing it altogether will be a daunting challenge, and even if successful will leave the Republican party holding the bag politically for the policy muddle they will create in the process.

"It would be a mess," said Donald Berwick, who led the law's implementation last year as Obama's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services director. "If I was given the assignment of unwinding the law, I wouldn't know how to do that. I would thoroughly disagree with it but it would be technically very difficult."

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Medicare

GOP Filibuster Ends Tenure Of Health Care Cost Cutting Expert

Brian Beutler | November 23, 2011, 1:45PM

President Obama hasn't used his recess appointment power very often. But he didn't hesitate to install Donald Berwick as the administrator of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services without Senate confirmation over a year ago, to lead the implementation of the new health care law. Berwick's has, without a doubt, been Obama's most important recess appointment, and his most effective. But he will step down early next month -- a few weeks before his term expires -- because filibustering Republicans continue to deny him an up or down vote.

The GOP claims its opposition is rooted in Berwick's past praise of Britain's state-run National Health Service. But his powers as CMS administrator obviously stop well short of socializing the United States health care system. So what gives?

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Abortion

Report: Feds Say Indiana Medicaid Plan Banning Funds For Planned Parenthood Is Illegal

Jon Terbush | June 1, 2011, 5:11PM

Gov. Mitch Daniels (R-IN)

The Health and Human Services Department has told the state of indiana that its Medicaid plan, which prohibits any funding for health clinics that perform abortions, must be changed, according to the Associated Press.

Via the AP:

In a letter sent to Indiana's Medicaid director, and obtained by The Associated Press on Wednesday, Medicaid Administrator Donald M. Berwick says Indiana's plan will improperly bar Medicaid beneficiaries from receiving services. Berwick writes that federal law requires Medicaid beneficiaries to be able to obtain services from any provider qualified to provide services.

That letter comes about a month after Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) signed a bill stripping Planned Parenthood of all public funds, including Medicaid payments. According the letter obtained by the AP, the state can change its Medicaid plan, or face possible penalties.

Scott Brown

Silver Bullet: Can Scott Brown And Ron Wyden Save Health Care Reform?

Brian Beutler | November 22, 2010, 4:17PM

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR)

A new bipartisan proposal that would allow innovative states to basically drop out of the health care law could help ease conservative opposition to the plan, even as the number of Republicans who have joined various lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the individual mandate has swelled in recent months.

New legislation, introduced last week by Sens. Scott Brown (R-MA) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) would make a simple tweak to the law: It would allow the states to implement their own health care systems, and thus be exempt from most of the requirements of the Affordable Care Act. The catch: Those programs would have to cover, with decent insurance, at least as many people as the health care law does, but without adding to the deficit.

The law technically already provides this exception -- but as currently written, states can only begin opting out in 2017. This new Wyden/Brown proposal would kick that date forward to 2014.

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Elizabeth Warren

Progressives Press Obama To Recess Appoint Elizabeth Warren Before Congress Returns

Brian Beutler | September 7, 2010, 12:38PM

Elizabeth Warren, Chairman of the Congressional Oversight Panel for TARP

There are only a few days left until Congress returns to session, and that means President Obama faces a deadline, of sorts, if he wants to quickly fill vacancies in his administration. Obama has until the beginning of next week to offer recess appointments to nominees or expected nominees to positions that typically require Senate confirmation.

Highlighting the progressive angst about Obama's general unwillingness to exercise his recess appointment power are new website ads, produced by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, pressuring him to give Elizabeth Warren the top slot at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

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Michele Bachmann

Bachmann Back To Beating The 'Death Panels' Drum

Megan Carpentier | July 9, 2010, 3:31PM

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN)

You didn't think the resurrection of death panels would begin and end with one Fox News legal contributor, did you? Donald Berwick's supposedly nefarious plans for the nation's seniors from his ominpotent perch atop the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (reporting to the Secretary of Department of Health and Human Services) are far too dangerous for that -- and Rep. Michele Bachmann knows it.

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Death Panels

Obama's Recess Appointment Allows GOP To Resurrect Death Panels (VIDEO)

Megan Carpentier | July 8, 2010, 12:48PM

Former GOP Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin

It was only a year ago that Sarah Palin invented out of whole cloth the concept of "death panels" and accused Congress of inserting them into the health care bill. Though they have been at this point thoroughly debunked as a way for Medicare to pay for doctors to talk patients through their options on end-of-life care before they are at the end of their lives, the concept that the government will decide which seniors should live and which should die apparently continues to hold resonance for easily-frightened elderly people, Fox News viewers and Fox News legal contributor and former Pataki appointee Peter Johnson, Jr.. That's the only explanation for Johnson's resurrection of death panels today in order to attack the new Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Donald Berwick.

Berwick, the new Republican whipping boy for health care reform, once expressed admiration for the British system because of its ability to provide universal coverage and improve care. Obviously, that means he plans to use his new position to kill off American's senior citizens.

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Donald Berwick

GOPers Blast The New Great Satan: Obama Recess Appointee Donald Berwick

Megan Carpentier | July 7, 2010, 11:42AM

Donald Berwick, President Obama's nominee to head the agency that runs Medicare and Medicaid

Last night, President Obama announced his fifteenth recess appointment: Dr. Donald Berwick, who will serve as Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Berwick is a pediatrician, Harvard professor and head of the non-profit Institute for Healthcare Improvement by day and, if the Republican reaction is any guide, the man who will institute health care rationing and kill the elderly at night.

Not sure why it's such a big deal that the President finally put someone, or even Berwick, in charge of administering Medicare, Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program after four years of our government tolerating a rudderless agency? The Republicans have answers for you.

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