Eagleionline

This week, President Obama traveled to Green Bay, Wisconsin to push for healthcare reform. In his address, the president pushed for a “government-sponsored health plan to compete with private insurers.” Yet Obama’s plan may find some vehement opposition.

Although recent polling indicates that 62% of Americans believe the government should offer healthcare for all, the idea of government-run healthcare has met resistance from prominent conservatives, such as Ramesh Ponnuru of The National Review. Ponnuru recently derided the plan as “Obamacare” and called for its defeat. As in 1993, when Democrats last sought to have government-sponsored healthcare, organizations have also formed to oppose the push for universal healthcare coverage. One such organization is Conservatives for Patients’ Rights, which believes that “the path to effective health care reform must be based on the patient-doctor relationship and not from a top-down, big government perspective.”

Conservative groups aren’t the only ones skeptical of Obama’s plan. According to the Washington Post, moderate Democratic senators, including Kent Conrad of North Dakota, are worried that a government-run plan “would enjoy an unfair cost advantage and force private insurers out of business.”

President Obama has made healthcare reform one of his priorities in the first year of his term. Whether he will succeed in shepherding significant reform through Congress remains to be seen.