President Obama, who told a group of nurses in July that when it came to health care reform, “We can’t kick the can down the road any longer,” is in his plan released yesterday…..kicking the can down the road.

“Mr. Obama…identified a tax on high-cost insurance plans as a key mechanism for curbing the growth of health-care costs. He was right. Unfortunately, in the legislative process the tax already was whittled down several times. Now the president proposes delaying it until 2018 — long after he leaves office — and raising the threshold at which it applies.”

Hmmm, I remember candidate Obama treating with scorn John McCain’s proposal to tax health care benefits during the 2008 campaign. Oh well, another campaign promise bites the dust.

“…Overall..the president has proposed a plan whose uncertain savings are made even less certain, and whose known costs are increased..Now it postpones the key savings mechanism. Administration officials argue that Mr. Obama deserves credit for not dropping the tax altogether. But when did he stand up and fight for the better approach? And what credit or credibility is due a president who endorses a tax but leaves to his successor the unpleasant task of collecting it?”

Stand up and fight? President Obama? Surely you jest. Unless it’s fighting for the pharmaceutical industry to keep its monopoly via the backroom deal with PhRMA, or fighting to deliver millions of new customers to private insurance companies through the individual mandate.