The Fog about Health Care Reform
In case anyone was wondering if Common Sense University had taken our eyes off the health care reform attempts in Washington D.C., the answer is simple: We have not! The primary reason we have not commented on it is the fact that not a lot has happened during the past five weeks since Congress returned from their August recess. To be accurate, only three things have happened:
1. Those in favor of health care reform from the President on down the chain of command are still in favor of it and are demonizing everybody who is against it or who voices his or her opinion or rational in opposition of this massive legislation. Reliable public opinion polls remain consistent in showing a majority of the American people not being in favor of this massive health care reform overhaul.
2. The Senate Finance Committee finally concluded its ‘deliberations’ and voted a bill out of Committee on October 13 by a vote of 14 to 9; Republican Senator Olympia Snowe from Maine voting with the Democrat majority, explaining her vote as “when history calls, history calls”! Whatever is meant by that arrogant statement, we do not know. As we have found out since, the bill as passed by the Committee is 1502 pages long and it is now posted on the Internet for those to read who care about its content. We suggest though not a single Democrat Senator will read it!
3. The Democrat leadership in the Senate, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nevada) and several Democrat Committee Chairmen have been holding meetings behind closed doors with the White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emmanuel to write a combined bill between two Senate Committees before presenting it to the full Senate for debate, mark-up and eventual vote. Procedurally, such a vote requires sixty (60) ‘Ayes’ for debate to end and to vote on the final version of the bill. This might take some time since there is obviously no agreement among Democrats about inclusion of a so called ‘Public Option’ provision. A public option being a vehicle to offer health insurance run by the United States Government, in competition with the current private Insurance companies. These secret ‘behind closed doors’ meetings will end some time soon and only then will America find out what the Democrats in the Senate are proposing for all of us.
Since the White House is represented in these secret meetings, we have to question the value of campaign promises made by President Barack Obama or at least the earnestness of his commitments. He, the President assured everybody numerous times during the 2008 campaign that there would be absolute transparency during the deliberations of major legislation. In addition, he promised a minimum of 72 hours of Internet posting of any such bill before it would be voted on by Congress and even before he would sign such a bill. The fact is, he has violated these campaign statements already several times on previous occasions (like the stimulus act etc) and he will not keep his commitments either when it comes to the health care overhaul bill. He is just too eager to sign it whatever its content. Can you spell H Y P O C R A C Y ? We here believe that he never intended to keep those campaign promises but they sounded good to the voters and were delivered so honestly and convincingly, you had to admire the man for being so completely open about what he was going to do once elected. Well, so much for that!
But back to the current state of the health care reform overhaul. Nobody in Congress can tell anybody right now when certain votes will take place and in what form. It is all very foggy and will probably remain so for some time. Procedurally, we are told that the Senate will vote on a final bill before the House of Representatives will combine their respective three Committee versions into one and bring it to a vote there. This then will be followed by a so called reconciliation process whereby the House and the Senate versions will be negotiated into one bill upon which both Houses will have to take another vote to approve such a piece of legislation before it goes to the White House for the President’s signature. The Democrats hope to do all this before the end of this year and it is possible that they will do so. Their respective majorities in both chambers are so huge, they do not need a single Republican vote to pass the legislation.
In fact, the Republicans have been completely shut out of any serious negotiations of health care reform, every one of the amendments offered by Republicans during Committee deliberations have been voted down by the Democrat majorities on such Committees. The true reason for all this current wrangling and the delays of completing this legislation is disunity and substantial disagreement among Democrats over various provisions in the bills. The ultra-liberals are holding out for universal health care reform, a single-payer plan for all Americans while the more moderate Democrats are against such drastic overhaul. This is where the battles are being fought currently. We will simply have to wait and see what comes out of all these ‘secret’ meetings, in essence when the fog will be lifted and we all can find out what they agreed to among themselves.
Our next article will deal with specifics of this health care reform by proposing our version of health care reform that would find, in our common sense driven opinion, majority support among American voters.
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