I guess the inevitable conservative pushback to the junk insurance bailout bills is starting. Per The Hill, the head of Redstate thinks that Landrieu's "keep your health plan" bill is a trap that the GOP is going to walk right into.
“It is widely acknowledged that Congressman Upton’s legislation is more messaging than substance,” Erickson wrote. “His legislation does not have anything in it that can force insurance companies, in the topsy-turvy world of ObamaCare, to keep insurance plans going. But there is a plan that does.”
Erickson argued that Landrieu’s bill is an insurance company mandate, and that “the GOP is supposedly against mandates and against government forcing private business and individuals into contracts they don’t want.”
“The House will be forced to either vote for the Landrieu plan or be characterized as siding with insurance companies against people,” Erickson wrote. “In one fell swoop, the Democrats will have the GOP on record saving Mary Landrieu’s reelection in Louisiana by casting her as the one who saved Americans’ healthcare plans, and also getting on record as really being in favor of fixing ObamaCare with the use of mandates.”
I really thought that Landrieu's attempt was a craven attempt to save herself next year, but now I see that while it is a bad policy choice, it really could put the GOPers in a tough spot and if we're lucky, Landrieu's and Upton's junk insurance bailout bills will be tied up in conference and the exchanges will be up and running and we can have a good political message going while we rid ourselves of the cancer of junk insurance forever.
I have to give it to Mary Landrieu. There are a few ways of turning the attention on Obama's foolish promise to putting the Republicans in a bind and continuing our way towards implementing Obamacare and gradually ridding ourselves of junk insurance and the medical bankruptcies that it causes. And of course, Obama should say he'd veto the Upton bill but basically concede that he would sign the Landrieu bill.