why didn't the GOP take care of health care when they could have (revisited)

Steve Chapman, in TownHall.com, makes a great point!

I've made a similar point on energy and funding for Planned Parenthood (respectively, not broadened and removed by Bush and his Republican Congresses).

Republicans fault President Obama for plans that would greatly expand federal outlays on health care, enlarge the federal role in the provision of medicine, doom private insurance and wrestle Aunt Sally into the grave. They have some valid points. But while they're heaping blame on Obama, they need to save a share for someone else: themselves.

...for four years under President Bush, we had not only a Republican president but also a Republican Congress. And what happened? Nothing. Republicans left health care reform to wait until the Democrats regained power, and now the Democrats have.

One reason the president has a good chance of getting ambitious legislation passed this year is that so many health care failures have gone unaddressed for so long....

You may have forgotten that George W. Bush made a big deal of proposing tax credits of $7,500 per person or $15,000 per family to purchase medical coverage. He did that in 2007, only to be spurned by a Democratic Congress. Why did he wait till the seventh year of his term? He didn't. He had offered the idea in 2004, only to encounter raging indifference in his Republican Congress.

The truth is Republicans just can't muster an interest in the subject until a Democratic president comes along and offers legislation, which is their cue to wake up and scream in horror. They solemnly agree the existing system has a host of serious flaws. But they can never get excited about fixing them -- only about making sure Democrats don't get to....