By Philip Klein, American Spectator

 Obamacare is destined to fail

With Democrats hurtling toward a scheduled Sunday vote on national health care legislation, Washington is already starting to speculate on the political ramifications of its passage.

The latest Gallup poll suggests that President Obama’s drive to jam the unpopular bill through Congress is taking its toll. For the first time of his presidency, more people disapprove of Obama’s performance (48 percent) than approve (46 percent).

Despite the polling numbers, the White House publicly insists that once Americans understand what’s in the bill, they’ll come to like it and over time will embrace it just like Social Security and Medicare. Yet the reverse is more likely to be true. Once Americans confront the consequences of this government takeover of the health care system, it will only become more unpopular.

When he set out to overhaul the nation’s health care system, Obama faced a basic problem in selling his proposals: roughly 85 percent of Americans have health insurance and are generally satisfied with their personal care. So as a result, he was forced to make a series of bold claims. He has argued that without his brand of health care legislation, premiums would spiral out of control; health care spending would eat up more than a fifth of our economy; and our entitlement crisis would cripple the federal government. Meanwhile, he’s claimed that his plan would expand coverage while reducing deficits and improving quality of care. And of course, none of these revolutionary changes would interfere in any way with people who like the coverage they have.

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By GLENN THRUSH, Politico

 Don’t leave yet Obama….

The White House has been bringing its A game to the final push to pass health care reform – and some House Democrats are so pleased with the shift they want President Barack Obama to postpone his planned Asia trip again if a deal isn’t sealed before his newly announced departure on Sunday.

Several House members interviewed by POLITICO said Obama’s looming trip to Australia, Indonesia and Guam, while creating a natural deadline for 11th-hour health care talks, is once again becoming a problem as he tries to sell reluctant members of his own party on the reform legislation.

Last week, the president pushed back his planned Friday departure three days after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats groused he was leaving at a critical time.

“For the first time in eight months, the president is finally getting his hands dirty, and now he’s going to hop on the plane? Please,” said a Democratic congressman, requesting anonymity.

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FOXNews

 Obama is pushing Healthcare reform regardless of what the American people say

President Obama urged Congress to schedule a vote on health care reform in the "next few weeks," declaring Wednesday that it’s "time to make a decision" on the package, the product of a yearlong debate.

The president described the bipartisan summit held last week in Washington as the last leg of the health care reform debate. He said all arguments have been exhausted and that Congress owes the American people a final "up-or-down" vote.

"Every argument has been made," he said. "Everything there is to say about health care has been said and just about everybody has said it. So now’s the time to make a decision about how to finally reform health care so that it works, not just for the insurance companies, but for America’s families and America’s businesses."

The president, who is pressing forward with health care reform despite a nationwide clamor to address jobs creation — and despite the upset election of Republican Scott Brown to U.S. Senate in January — stressed that he is not concerned about the risky politics of pushing ahead. Though Democrats are planning to use a controversial tactic known as reconciliation to pass the bill in the Senate with a 51-vote majority, the president said that passing health care reform is "right," even if it has electoral consequences.

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By Tim Reid, Times Online

President Obama declared for the first time today that he is prepared to steamroll his troubled health reform legislation through Congress with only Democratic support, a move Republicans denounced as the “nuclear option”.

Signalling that his patience had now snapped after a year-long fight over health reform, Mr Obama laid the ground for Democrats in Congress to muscle the Bill through using a high-risk legislative maneuvre known as reconciliation, which overrides a Republican filibuster.

Although he did not use the word “reconciliation”, Mr Obama made clear that is the uncompromising route he now intends to take with his top domestic priority. White House aides and top Democrats on Capitol Hill have also stated in recent days that, in the face of unanimous Republican opposition, the legislation will now be forced through.

By using reconciliation, Democrats can get the health reform package through the Senate with a simple majority, rather than needing the Bill to pass the 60-vote threshold needed to overcome a Republican filibuster. Mr Obama’s party ceded their 60-stong majority in the upper chamber after losing the late Edward Kennedy’s Massachusetts seat in January.

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Reuters

 Obama is ready to push it through

President Barack Obama began a final push for healthcare reform on Wednesday, urging Congress to vote on the plan in the next few weeks even if it means passing the measure with a narrow Democratic majority and no Republican support.

Although much uncertainty remains on the path to passage of the legislation, Obama opposed Republican calls to throw out broad bills passed by the House of Representatives and Senate last year and begin again with a more step-by-step approach.

Americans are waiting for the administration to lead, Obama said in remarks at the White House backing a muscle tactic known as "reconciliation" as a way of overcoming rock-solid Republican opposition.

Republicans dismissed Obama’s comments and said Democrats risked paying a price in mid-term congressional elections in November. "Every election in America this fall will be a referendum on this issue," Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said.

Wall Street shrugged off Obama’s statement.

"It doesn’t really seem like there’s any change here. Basically, what it was was a call to action," said Steve Shubitz, a healthcare analyst at Edward Jones. "There really wasn’t much new in there, meaning nothing incrementally more damaging to the health insurance companies," he said.

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By Jake Tapper, ABC News

 Obama is ready to Rahm It through

White House officials tell ABC News that in his remarks tomorrow President Obama will indicate a willingness to work with Republicans on some issue to get a health care reform bill passed but will say that if it is necessary, Democrats will use the controversial reconciliation rules requiring only 51 Senate votes to pass the "fix" to the Senate bill.

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have been awaiting the president’s remarks direction on how health care reform will proceed.

In his remarks, scheduled to be at the White House, the president will paint a picture of what he will say will happen without a health care reform bill – skyrocketing premiums, everyone at the mercy of the insurance industry as recently seen with the 39% premium increases proposed by Anthem Blue Cross in California.

He will note that the “fixed” bill will include the proposal for a new "Health Insurance Rate Authority" to set guidelines for reasonable rate increases. If proposed premium increases are not justifiable per those Health Insurance Rate Authority guidelines, the Health and Human Services Secretary or state regulators could block them.

The president will outline the plan to pass the bill, including having the House of Representatives pass the Democratic Senate health care reform legislation as well as a second bill containing various “fixes.”

He will call for an up or down vote, as has happened in the past, and though he won’t use the word reconciliation, he’ll make it clear that if they’re not given an up or down vote, Democrats will use the reconciliation rules.

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By ANDY BARR, Politico

 Obama’s friend and advisor Buffett says scrap the bill

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett advised President Barack Obama on Monday to scrap the health care bill and start over.

In an interview with CNBC, Buffett said the current bill does not focus on controlling costs, which he sees as the central problem that must be addressed to reform the system. He added that while he does not like the Senate bill, he’d vote for it in preference to doing nothing.

“What we have now is untenable over time,” said Buffett, an early supporter of Obama’s candidacy. “That kind of a cost compared to the rest of the world is really like a tapeworm eating, you know, at our economic body.”

“We have a health system that, in terms of costs, is really out of control,” he added. “And if you take this line and you project what has been happening into the future, we will get less and less competitive. So we need something else.”

But while Buffett, the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, applauded Obama for taking up the reform effort, he said that “unfortunately, we came up with a bill that really doesn’t attack the cost situation that much.”

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By Carrie Budoff Brown, Politico

 I will raise taxes on future generations to pay for your healthcare

President Barack Obama released a $950 billion health care reform proposal Monday aimed at pleasing the warring wings of his own party and bringing along skeptical voters, in part by including a provision to put off an unpopular tax on high-cost health insurance plans until 2018.

One notable absence in Obama’s plan – a public health insurance option, a favorite of liberals, but a provision that became the most controversial part of the congressional debate on reform. Obama has long said he would sign a bill without it, and his own legislation confirms that.

Obama released his bill just days before Thursday’s bipartisan health care summit, and by doing so, he hoped to set the agenda for the meeting – making his own bill the starting point for any discussions, and trying to force Republicans to come to the table with their own plan.

The plan appears designed to allay liberals in the House while not going too far in a way that would alienate Senate moderates. For example, it vastly scales back the tax on “Cadillac” insurance plans, which will please liberal Democrats, but by leaving out the public option, hopes to win over moderates.

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