I have already pointed out that Ted Kennedy has a health care agenda that he plans to begin pushing early next year. Yesterday, he reiterated his intentions:

Senator Edward M. Kennedy … told reporters yesterday that he would advance a bill early next year calling for universal health care.

Kennedy plans to reclaim his chairmanship of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee from which he will launch his initiative.

And it isn’t likely that the President-elect will have much influence on what the final product will look like. I explain why at the American Thinker.

Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, who is a Republican, wants to introduce market-based reforms to save his state’s Medicaid program:

Gov. Bobby Jindal on Friday proposed restructuring Louisiana’s health-care program for the poor into a private insurance model that relies on managed-care principles to control costs and improve health outcomes.

And why are these reforms needed?

The state’s Medicaid program … is on an unsustainable financial path. Whereas the program consumed about 8.5 percent of the general fund budget in 2006, it is projected to take up 21 percent by 2011, the governor said.

Jindal’s approach differs pretty dramatically from the Democrat strategy of doing nothing to avert the impending financial meltdown of Medicare.

Maybe we need this guy in Washington.

If the definition of insanity involves doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results, Democrat Senator Max Baucus is as crazy as a rat in a barrel. 

The health care plan he just announced has the same features that doomed every state-level universal coverage plan. John Goodman provides an example:

The Baucus plan includes many of the same elements implemented in the Massachusetts mandated health plan, which is now suffering from massive cost overruns for the state and escalating premium costs for consumers. 

This is exactly what has happened every time this economically illiterate strategy has been attempted. You can’t repeal the laws of economics by government fiat.

I guess the bright side of this idiocy is that Baucus and the people who now control our government will prove once and for all that they are unable to learn from experience.

Maybe that will cause the voters to give them the bum’s rush—-again.

The WSJ has a good op-ed on the effect a Democrat Congress will have on our new President. On health care, for example, Pete Stark will “encourage” him to abandon his “centrist” health care plan and go for single-payor.

The Chairman of a crucial House subcommittee dealing with health care doesn’t think Mr. Obama’s proposal to significantly federalize the insurance market goes far enough. He wants a single-payer system like Canada’s. Mr. Obama may want to strike a deal with Senate Republicans on health care, but Mr. Stark will be pulling him left at every turn.

Obama’s record is one of “going along to get along,” so I don’t see him putting up much of a fight on this.  In fact, he was for single-payer before he ran for President. So they probably won’t have to push him very hard.

Also, as I have pointed out before, Senator Kennedy is working hard on a Medicare-for-All bill, for which his impending demise will create considerable congressional momentum.

With Pete Stark and Kennedy pushing hard for single-payer, and Obama only recently against it for the sake of political expediency, is it not obvious what’s going to happen on health care next year?