Now that we are seven months removed from the fight over the single largest expansion of government in US history, it’s a good time to take stock and point out some silver linings.

In a perverse sort of way, ObamaCare may be the best thing that could have come out of Obama’s first term as President. Had he and the Democrat leadership opted to push a more limited program that only extended to those who couldn’t afford health insurance, Americans may have gone for it, thus locking in yet another entitlement program that would metastasize beyond its original scope. But by overreaching they made the water so hot that the frog of public opinion can’t wait to leap out.

#1: It will eventually result in real conservative health care reform

The direct result of passage of the bill was the creation of a massive issue for opposition to organize around. So massive in fact that it may ensure that it will eventually be overturned in its entirety and replaced with a more market driven reform, something conservatives probably would have been otherwise unable to achieve without ObamaCare.

Democrats theorized that, as time progressed, the controversy would subside and Americans would come to like what the Democrats had done for them. Not so. The majority of the public saw passage of the bill in the face of massive opposition as an exercise in arrogance. A recent Rasmussen survey shows that fifty-one percent of Americans believe the new law will be bad for the county, and fifty-six percent favor its outright repeal.  read more »

What kind of benevolent dictator would declare his love for Britain’s stingy, depressing, complicated, cold and arbitrary National Health Service by describing it as “generous, hopeful, confident, joyous and just”?

That would be Harvard-based pediatrician Donald Berwick, who recently received a recess appointment as Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services by the benevolent dictator who describes his pessimistic and stale vision for America as “hope and change.”

Recess appointments are an executive procedure used, for better or for worse, when the Senate gives a presidential appointee a difficult time during confirmation hearings—for example, when they filibuster a nominee.  Obama’s appointment of Berwick bears the distinction of having been given without a confirmation hearing having even been scheduled.

It’s as though Obama decided that the very requirement that his nominee appear before a Democratic-controlled Senate constituted an unreasonably difficult hurdle.  This isn’t a recess appointment—it’s a vacation to Bermuda appointment.

As the Wall Street Journal noted, “Circumventing Senate confirmation to appoint the new Medicare chief is part of the same political willfulness that inflicted ObamaCare on the country despite the objections of most voters.”  CBS News observed, “The debate over Berwick’s recess appointment makes clear what the White House knew all too well—Berwick may not have survived the Senate confirmation process, which would have turned into a proxy debate over health care reform.”  read more »