Daschle: Health Care Law Still Vulnerable
Politico reports:
Foes of the health care law “can still do real damage to the cause of reform, ” Tom Daschle warns in a book due out next week.
Daschle, the former Senate majority leader, warns that opponents didn’t stop fighting the law after President Barack Obama signed it in March.
“By constantly suggesting to the public that the law is illegitimate, they could encourage large groups of Americans to give up on the law, or even fight it, before it has had a chance to prove itself,” Daschle writes in “Getting It Done,” with co-author David Nather. “Now, the danger is that the critics of reform will kill it before it ever has a chance to take hold.”
He says that other controversial measures, such as Medicare, didn’t have as many threats as reform does. State legislatures could revolt and not implement it; Congress could deny it funding; and the public could “simply give up on it.”
“We cannot allow this to happen,” Daschle writes in the book, due out Oct. 12 and obtained by POLITICO. “To allow the cause of reform to fail now, after all of the obstacles Obama and Congress overcame, would be a waste of their hard-fought efforts.”
Overall, Daschle’s insider’s account doesn’t contain too many secrets unbeknown to close observers of the process. His defense of the tax scandal that ultimately ended his nomination to be secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services doesn’t break new ground, either.
Click here to read more.
