Michael Cannon, NRO:
Indiana governor Mitch Daniels’s policy director, Lawren Mills, Grace-Marie Turner of the Galen Institute, and Bob Goldberg of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest take exception to my NRO article “Mitch Daniels’s Obamacare Problem.” In brief, the trio believes that Daniels’s expansion of government-run health care is a conservative triumph. I can’t believe we’re even having this conversation.
To recap, the Healthy Indiana Plan, which Daniels signed into law in 2007, bears the following similarities to Obamacare:
1. Both expanded Medicaid, which crowds out private insurance — Obama to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, Daniels to 200 percent.
2. Like Obamacare, the Daniels plan raised taxes to pay for part of its expansion of government-run health care. (Daniels’s 126 percent hike in Indiana’s cigarette tax mirrors Obama’s 159 percent hike in the federal cigarette tax.)
3. Like Obamacare, the Daniels plan pushes part of its cost onto other states. Taxpayers in other states bear two-thirds of the spending burden (through the portion of Medicaid funding that comes through Washington, D.C.), and Daniels has proposed making other states pay even more.
4. Just as Obamacare will cost more than projected, an independent review found that Daniels’s cigarette-tax hike hasn’t kept pace with Indiana’s share of the spending, and further spending overruns may be on the horizon.
5. Both Obamacare and the Daniels plan contain a “slacker mandate.” Obamacare mandates that insurers cover “children” on their parents’ policies up to age 26. Daniels mandated that insurers do so up to age 24. (A similarity I overlooked in my original article.)
Turner says the Daniels plan “could not be more different” from Obamacare. I’ve just listed five ways that it could. And it gets worse:
6. Daniels has accepted Obamacare grants and is implementing an Obamacare “exchange” in Indiana — something he is under no obligation to do, contrary to what Turner claims.
That’s enough to cause problems for the repeal effort were Daniels to be the GOP’s presidential nominee.
Well, that’s okay. We can always just draft Chris Christie as our conservative warrior. Rumor has it he gives excellent YouTube.
Staunch!
****
update: Tevi Troy doesn’t like it when Republicans criticize Republicans.
Good thing I’m a classical liberal / legal conservative. It gives me an out. Plus, no need to wear the flag pin to prove my bona fides!
WINNING!
I think your last link is broke.
Daniels is a go along – get along guy. If you’re looking for a revolutionary, then he is not your man. He does know how to run large government agencies rather well. I fear that the press would eat him alive so we had better start hearing about some alternatives.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/262157/cannon-vs-daniels-tevi-troy
Herman Cain is looking better and better.
Link fixed.
“If you’re looking for a revolutionary, then he is not your man. He does know how to run large government agencies rather well”
That’s what I’ve been saying too, and my only problem with him is that I am looking for a revolutionary.
Well, after reading this I’m kinda skeptical about the good with numbers part too…
How did we put McCain up against Obama?
I’ll not vote for anyone who does not call Obama out repeatedly for being a failure. For having no leadership skills. For not focusing on what’s best for the country. For golfing more than all other presidents before him combined. For being a shitty president who concentrated on blaming others first, and his hobbies second, and then iced his lip up in the attic window.
It would be uncivil to let Obama slide even a little and risk any more damage.
What would Dick Lugar do?
I’ll add J0hn’s link as an update. But I’m so tired of hearing that we can’t criticize our own. Honestly. How do ignorance and clanworship better serve us?
When you live out on the frontier, you don’t have your own.
Your flag decal won’t get you into heaven anymore.
I’d add a caveat to that. We can and should criticize our own, as long as the root of the criticism is conservatism based. Criticizing our own with a club conveniently offered by the MBM or the democrats that in no way defends conservatism? No way, no how.
Mitch has problems because he has implemented some not so conservative ideas – valid criticism.
Mitch has problems because he isn’t sufficiently banging the drum for civility – invalid criticism.
Those that continually take the club from the MBM and/or democrats are most likely not leaders of conservatism but followers of whatever they think will get them to 50%+1. They are the RINOs and those for whom self is more important than America and should be treated with undisguised contempt.
Sarah Palin has always maintained that primaries are good for the party. It’s to weed out rinos and squishes like Mitch. We don’t need any Bush leftovers, anyway.
As noted in in the comments over there, it’s always fun to see the “11th commandment” invoked by those who shat all over the likes of Palin. Funny how the gipper’s advice is only referenced when people are RINO hunting.
The problem with the so-called 11th commandment is two-fold. First, it wasn’t Reagan’s. Second Reagan Reagan descecrated it. I’m talking using it like toilet paper desecration here.
What else do you call it when a Republican challenges a sitting Republican President? That’s just not done! (Except when it is.)
David Brooks’ stink rubs off on Mitch Daniels, but Ezra Klein’s doesn’t rub off on Michael Cannon?
Daniels can promise Medicaid benefits all he wants – the truth is that almost no doctor will see medicaid patients because of the very low, and paperwork intensive, payments.
My doubts about Daniels are really getting bad. He is looking more and more like the type of Republican that will be happy to put a beautiful bow on a Democrat sh*t sandwich and tell us all how good it will taste.