GOP Plan Too Little Too Late, Observers Say
Jason Plautz
Thursday, November 5, 2009 8:30 AM
Between the media leak and the official release of the Republican health care plan from House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, analysts and politicians had plenty of time to react to the plan. Much of the reaction was negative.
"The bill has no chance of passage," wrote David M. Herszenhorn at the New York Times, adding that it was too little and too late on purpose: "They waited until just a few days before the start of formal debate to limit the amount of time Democrats could spend criticizing them."
At ThinkProgress, Igor Volsky wrote that the plan was just "a message amendment that translates Republican rhetoric against the Democratic proposal into legislative language." According to Matthew Yglesias, "The result of all this will be a situation in which the health insurance system works better for people who don't need health care services, and much worse for people who actually are sick or who become sick in the future. It's basically a health un-insurance policy."
Ezra Klein refused to call the plan a policy document: "You don't get to save time by producing a bill that wouldn't solve any problems and doesn't hang together and then also get to whine about how no one is covering the legislation you introduced on Nov. 3 when you can't even say how many people will be covered under your bill! This isn't serious legislation. It's a really long press release."
Republicans, of course, touted their plan's emphasis on costs over coverage. "[Democrats'] focus is to get as close presumably to universal coverage as possible, and that's their every right to do," Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., told Politico. "Republicans, listening to the American people back home, believe the real issue is cost."
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