Sometimes the key to good politics (and good policy) is simply to say out loud what your opponents are saying amongst themselves. And that’s just the case with these new health care proposals the president is set to unveil in his state of the union.
I’ll leave it to the good folks over at our new health care blog to get down into all the details. But the core premise of the policies the president is about to lay out is that Americans are over-insured when it comes to health insurance. Over-insured. Got too much insurance.
These aren’t my words. These are the words used by the conservative policy-wonks who came up with the president’s proposals. Just hop over to Google and start googling the phrase ‘over insured’ along with ‘health’ and ‘conservative’. This what they think; and what the president thinks. It’s why he’s behind these ideas.
So the president thinks the problem is that people have too much health insurance. People are over-insured.
I don’t think that’s how most Americans see the problem, do you? I’m confident that they don’t. Really confident.
But let’s let them decide.
The president wants to make health care his political issue this year. No Democrat should open their mouth this year on this topic without first saying this: The president thinks the problem is that Americans have too much health insurance; we don’t.
Health care policy is an immensely complicated issue. And that complexity can sometimes be a cover for politicians pushing policies that would screw most families. In this case, however, the president and his supporters have done everyone the favor is simplifying what they’re up to and what they want to do.
The president thinks you’re over-insured. He thinks you have too much health insurance.
Add water and stir …
