Obama’s Second-Term Agenda

The result is not even a liberal approach to escalating costs but a ticking time bomb: a scheme that will build up pressure in our private insurance system while offering no escape. Rather than reform a system that everyone agrees is unsustainable, it will subsidize that system and compel participation in it—requiring all Americans to pay ever-growing premiums to insurance companies while doing essentially nothing about the underlying causes of those rising costs. .  .  . Once implemented fully, it would fairly quickly force a crisis that would require another significant reform. Liberals would seek to use that crisis, or the prospect of it, to move the system toward the approach they wanted in the first place.

In short, Obama-care “is designed to push people into a system that will not exist—a health care bridge to nowhere.”

And that’s where Obama wants to lead us in a second term.

Jeffrey H. Anderson is a frequent contributor to The Weekly Standard.