Past Governor George Pataki (R-NY) was a guest on CNBC’s Squawk Box and is an opponent of the healthcare reform legislation.  The segment also included former Governor Howard Dean (D-VT) as a proponent of the legislation.  Governor Pataki referred to the legislation as ‘Obamacare’, a derogatory term that has been used by other opponents as well.  As the legislation was actually highly debated and contains numerous ideas that have been presented by Republicans both recently and in the past, I issued the following comment.

August 25, 2010

Listened to Govs Pataki and Dean.  With both parties having said they recognize the importance of health insurance reform, why this bill is called Obamacare is beyond me –

Obama supported the ‘public option’ – that is out
Medicare buy-in to age 55, not supported by the Republicans is out.
The top 3 priorities identified by John Boehner (exchange, buy across state lines, and ability for states to opt out) are in
The mandate has been a Republican idea and part of Mitt Romney’s MA program.

With a Republican president and a Republican controlled Congress not addressing this issue when they had the chance indicates no real desire to tackle the matter.  For the Republlicans to say they supported reform but that we needed to scrap the entire bill and start with a clean sheet of paper after a year of negotiation is disingenuous politics, as is calling this legislation Obamacare.