Republicans can learn much from Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
When a bipartisan majority in the House and the Senate passed the prescription drug benefit in 2003 (after a painful three and a half hour vote on the Conference report), Pelosi, who was then Minority Leader, promised immediately to repeal the legislation.
Democrats even briefly toyed with using that as one of their campaign themes, but it got lost in a Presidential campaign that focused mostly on national security and John Kerry’s flip-flopping ways.
But that didn’t mean that Mrs. Pelosi forgot about her pledge.
This health care reform package is notable for many reasons. It took a long time to get done. It spends a lot of money. It will immediately raise premiums. It promises to give better access to health insurance to those with pre-existing conditions. It makes people who don’t want to buy or can’t afford to buy health insurance buy it anyway.
And it repeals two parts of the original and most offensive (from Pelosi’s perspective) portions of the bill. It destroys the Medicare Advantage program, which Democrats irrationally feared would lead to the privatization of the Medicare program. And it makes the prescription drug companies fill in the so-called donut hole, which was put in place to keep the original bill within its budget parameters.
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