Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and therefore a key author and champion of the health-care law the Democrats enacted in March, offered a defense of the law at a town-hall meeting yesterday (even as he admitted he has still not actually read the legislation). Like a lot of Obamacare’s defenders these days, his basic case was that it was only a start — with more to come. “It’s not perfect, nothing’s perfect, but I’m telling you, ma’am, it’s a good start,” Baucus told a voter, according to The Hill.
Baucus and the other leading Democrats whose health-care message of the moment is that they’re going to build on the law and improve it should really be made to explain just what their next steps would be. Toward what is it a “start” exactly?
Baucus also made the following spirited defense of the bill to the same voter: “Mark my words, several years from now you’re going to look back and say, ‘Eh, maybe it isn’t so bad.’” Strong praise indeed.
If her senator has read the bill he voted for by then, he might look back and say that actually it is so bad.