By Dave Andrusko

Although a vote on repealing ObamaCare has temporarily been put off, we will continue to run entries that keep you up to date on some of the countless stories and opinion pieces written about this ungainly behemoth.

It’s no exaggeration to say that New York Times columnist David Brooks has a man crush on President Obama. Indeed sometimes his praise is so lavish it is positively embarrassed.

So when he headlines his opinions on the next phase of ObamaCare “Buckle Up for Round 2,” you know it’s coming from someone who is in Obama’s corner. There’s some very interesting material in his most recent column, so let me just briefly summarize his argument (www.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/opinion/07brooks.html?ref=davidbrooks). They speak to NRLC’s oft-voiced concern that the results of ObamaCare will be government-imposed rationing of lifesaving medical care—directly and indirectly.

“The health care reform law was signed 10 months ago, and what’s striking now is how vulnerable it looks,” he begins. Brooks talks about “several threats” that have emerged.

Working in reverse order, there is “Public hostility.” Opposition is at 53%, if you average a number of recent polls “Complaints are especially high among doctors,” Brooks writes. “According to a survey by the Physicians Foundation, 60 percent of private practice doctors say the law will force them to close their practices or to restrict them to certain categories of patients.” That’s often another way of saying physicians will not take patients on Medicare.

And if we were writing the column, obviously we would also talk about the resistance that grows out ObamaCare’s “multiple provisions authorizing federal subsidies for abortion, and additional provisions on which future abortion-expanding regulatory mandates may be based” as NRLC wrote in a recent letter to Members of Congress.

Brooks also lists Court challenges;

“False projections” (“The new system is based on a series of expert projections on how people will behave. In the first test case, these projections were absurdly off base”);

“Employee dumping” (“This is the most serious threat. Companies and unions across America are running the numbers and discovering they would be better off if, after 2014, they induced poorer and sicker employees to move to public insurance exchanges, where subsidies are much higher”); and

“Health care oligarchy” (“Since the law passed, there has been a frenzy of mergers and acquisitions, as hospitals, clinics and doctor groups have joined together into bigger and bigger entities. … The downside to this economic concentration is there could be less competition and cost control”).

For more on ObamaCare, please read that letter sent to Congress found at http://www.nrlc.org/News_and_Views/Jan2011/nv010611part2.html.