Why Republicans will defeat Obama on health care

(By Byron York, Washington Examiner) - Barack Obama is making an enormous mistake on the most important initiative of his presidency. In recent weeks, Obama has stressed that health care reform is the essential ingredient for the success of his economic recovery plan. Yet the president, easily the most gifted White House communicator since Ronald Reagan, has the message all wrong.

"Our businesses will not be able to compete, our families will not be able to save or spend, our budgets will remain unsustainable unless we get health care costs under control," Obama said in his radio address Saturday. He has said the same thing on many other occasions, almost always stressing the threat of runaway cost. When Obama talks health care, it's cost, cost, cost.

But that's not what people want to hear, or at least not all they want to hear. Of course they complain about the expense of medical treatment, but controlling cost is not their top health care concern.