For one, health care reform wasn’t really high on the Republican agenda during that time. Obviously now they need to act because Obama has introduced a plan, but different parties have different focuses. Bush won the elections and was expected to carry out his agenda. He didn’t campaign on health care reform.

Two, whenever Republicans tried to do something on health care reform, they were routinely beaten up by Democrats. In the Clinton years Congress proposed some fairly solid reforms for Medicare and Medicaid. Guess who was accused then of trying to kill Grandma? Even in 2004 (or 2005), when Congress was trying to reduce Medicaid spending increases by a tiny amount (not even a reduction in spending — a reduction in the projected increase in spending), Democrats and special interests groups fought them tooth-and-nail. Hell, the Democrats fought the Republicans when Bush pushed for his misguided expansion of the Medicare program because it wasn’t big enough! Basically, even if the Republicans wanted to do something about health care, the political realities would have made it impossible.

Necessary health care reform can only be done by a Democratic president (just like it took Clinton to “end welfare as we know it”). It’s the same principle that only Nixon can go to China. Obama had a chance to push for legislation that would have truly reduced the health care spending curve. He could have actually looked at the evidence and proposed something that would have moved Americans towards real health insurance (high-deductible health care plans paired with health savings accounts), eliminated the tax break for employer-sponsored insurance, allowed interstate competition for health plans, reformed Medicare, expanded Medicaid for the truly poor, given subsidies for the near-poor, and set up a government-run health insurance plan for those with pre-existing conditions. Something like that would have addressed a lot of the problems in the health care system, provided the safety net liberals want, and would lead to bending the cost curve down. Instead, Obama pushed for a plan that will only make our current problems worse and ensure health care spending continues to go up at an unsustainable rate. He completely fumbled on this issue and showed he simply wants to pander to his base instead of trying to find real solutions to our health care problems.

Between the Obama plan and doing nothing, I say let’s do nothing.

“Republicans believe in a simple principle: No American should have to worry about losing their health coverage — period. We stand for universal access to affordable health care coverage.”

Here’s my problem with this: Republicans ran the country from 2001 through 2006. Y’all like to act like that never happened. The fact remains, if there are so many good ideas, and if there is really such a commitment to universal coverage, why not do it when you run the show?

Perhaps it is because they don’t really care. Perhaps it is because all these claims in speeches and whatnot are just a smokescreen to hide the real agenda, which is to do nothing at all!

Maybe I am wrong, and actually, I hope I am. But the record of non-accomplishment speaks rather loudly for itself.