Rudy Giuliani on Obamacare: A Failure to Lead

Former New York City Mayor and rumored gubernatorial candidate Rudy Giuliani said Thursday that President Barack Obama may be facing the first big loss of his presidency because he has not taken strong enough leadership on health care.

Giuliani, in an exclusive interview with POLITICO prior to delivering the keynote address to the second annual GOPAC conference in Chicago, said the president has allowed fears of so-called “death panels” to persist because the White House has not taken a strong enough hand in crafting health care legislation.

“They never really studied the legislation that has been proposed,” Giuliani said. “The reason for the concern about the death panels is the legislation and the claim by the president that he will cover thirty to fifty million people without cost, and any time you say it’s without costs you raise a number of concerns.”

“It has to be with cost, because it costs money with every single person that is covered. That cost has to come from somewhere, which means something has to be cut,” the former Republican presidential candidate explained. “So where are you going to decrease services? There is a great fear that it will be by cutting off care for the elderly.”

Like former Alaska GOP Gov. Sarah Palin, Giuliani insisted that some of the president’s “closest advisors” have advocated for the creation of “death panels” to determine the course of treatment for some elderly and infirm Americans.

“If they’re concerned that they’ve created this massive groundswell that is worried about death panels, the only ones they have to blame are themselves,” Giuliani said of the Obama administration. “If they would like to end it, they should change the legislation, remove all these end of life panels, remove these czars and come clean with the American people that it is going to cost them a lot of money.”

You betcha Rudy will.

Buried in the Politico interview is Rudy’s prescription for health care reform.

When asked to provide his alternative, Giuliani suggested that rather than a systematic overhaul, those who cannot afford private health insurance should receive subsidies similar to the federal grants and loans many Americans receive to go to college.

“If we want to go the direction of universal health care, then the way we should go is the idea of subsidizing people who can’t afford health insurance the way we subsidize people who can’t afford a college education,” he said. “Democrats oppose that. So I believe we are in favor of reform even more than Democrats are in favor of reform.”

If Rudy runs and wins the New York governorship, he may be positioned to run for the Presidency again in 2012. Who else would be better positioned to beat Barack Obama?