Duh!

Barney Frank: Obama Made 'Mistake' With Health Care Push

By Jonathan Miller

Updated: April 16, 2012 | 6:35 p.m.
April 16, 2012 | 3:52 p.m.

Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., said he advised President Obama against taking up health care reform following a special election in 2010 that changed Democrats' fortunes in the Senate, saying that he should have instead turned his focus to financial reform.

Frank referenced former President Bill Clinton and his failed health care plan from the 1990s. “Obama made the same mistake Clinton made,” Frank said in a wide-ranging interview with New York magazine. “When you try to extend health care to people who don’t have it, people who have it and are on the whole satisfied with it get nervous.”

The outgoing representative from Massachusetts added that after Republican Scott Brown won former Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s seat, breaking Democrats’ filibuster-proof majority, Obama should have backed down: “I think we paid a terrible price for health care. I would not have pushed it as hard. As a matter of fact, after Scott Brown won, I suggested going back. I would have started with financial reform but certainly not health care," Frank said.

He said that if the president had followed his advice, “you could have gotten some pieces of it.”

My Editorial Comment: The American people were concerned over the rapidly rising cost of healthcare. So what do Obama and the Dems do? They expand healthcare to a handful of people who either didn't have health insurance or didn't want health insurance, added mandated coverage for a variety of health services, and drove the cost through the roof. And they did this to the American people during the most difficult financial times in most everyone's memory. And now they wonder why it is so wildly unpopular. It was arrogance in the extreme and they paid for it at the polls..and they're not through paying. Wait 'til November...