BUILDING ON PAST FAILURE:

Obama’s health care tactics just like those he used in state Senate in 2004 (LYNN SWEET AND DAVE McKINNEY, 8/31/09, Chicago Sun-Times)

Barack Obama, deflecting criticism of his top agenda item to deal with the health care crisis, accuses opponents of "fear-mongering," telling lies and miscasting his proposal as "socialized medicine."

That wasn't President Obama in recent weeks, as the health care debate has been heating up in Congress and in town halls across the country. That was then Illinois State Sen. Obama, arguing on the floor of the Illinois Senate on May 19, 2004. If the themes sound familiar, it's because Obama is mustering some of the same rhetoric in 2009 he used in 2004. [...]

If the past is prologue, the episode involving Obama's successful bid to pass what became the "Adequate Health Care Task Force" could be instructive. Obama won on a party-line vote.

Obama ultimately watered down the original bill because the insurance industry feared that the state was going to mandate coverage. Instead, Obama called for a task force to study coverage options, cost containment and portability of coverage, among other items. [...]

The task force Obama helped create took shape in August 2005 and issued a final report to then-Gov. Blagojevich and the General Assembly in January 2007.

The group's basic findings -- that Illinois essentially should adopt a form of universal health care coverage and employers should help foot the bill -- wound up being incorporated into Blagojevich's ill-fated bid later that spring to impose a gross-receipts tax on businesses. That tax proposal withered, effectively killing discussion on universal health care for the remainder of time Blagojevich was in office.

He can definitely get a bipartisan bill to study the issue into oblivion.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 31, 2009 8:39 AM