So far, we know a lot less about the reported compromise between Blue Dogs and the Dem leadership on health care bill in the Energy Committee. We know that the Blue Dogs on this committee have announced that a deal has been cut. We know that under this deal the price tag of the bill will get cut by $100 billion over the next ten years. We know that there will be more emphasis on hospitals in rural areas. We also know that companies with payrolls of $500,000 and less will be exempt from being mandated to provide insurance. There will also be some changes to the public option though those changes aren't clear.
Here's what we still don't know. We don't know when any health care bill will be voted on the full House. The Blue Dogs have gained a commitment not to have a full vote before the break. The current plan is to vote on it in September after the House comes back from break. Of course, in political terms a month and a half is an eternity and anything can happen prior to that. We also don't know the details of the bill that will come out of the Energy committee. Most importantly, we don't know what if anything will come out of the Senate.
The only bill that has been released in detail is this House bill. The only full released bill is nothing short of a monstrosity. It includes at least ten new government regulators. It creates a health care exchange that will be regulated by one of these regulators. All health care providers will be forced to be part of this exchange if they use or provide insurance in their business. As such, almost the entire health care field will now be regulated by a yet created new government regulator. It includes regulation and rationing of cancer care, end of life care, and even electric wheelchairs. It forces audits on any company or individual that self insures. It mandates the government to see patient records, bank statements, and tax records. It even sets salaries for doctors. These are just a few of the "highlights" of this monstrosity of a bill.
So, if what comes out of the Energy Committee is largely a mirror of what is now the only full bill, with the changes mentioned earlier, the Blue Dogs will have betrayed the principles they have professed to believe in. They will have been exposed as much more Democrats than fiscal conservatives. The current bill is not fiscally conservative. The changes made will not make it fiscally conservative. For instance, the Blue Dogs screamed that they wanted to see more in the bill to "control costs". Yet, there's ZERO in the House bill, so far, to deal with tort reform. The hundreds of billion spent in unnecessary tests to protect doctors against potential lawsuits are NOT currently addressed. If the Blue Dogs sign onto a bill without tort reform, they will have betrayed their fiscally conservative principles.
Politically this is a small victory for the President but it is still very small. No bill will be voted on in either chamber before the August break. That means that at least two more sets of jobs numbers will come out before the vote, and the legislators will go home to hear from their constituents before voting on any final bill. If the bill doesn't change markedly from the current version, they will get an earful. The rationing, government control, and ACORN giveaways are only now being analyzed. The changes that the Blue Dogs received will be marginal outliers if the final bill continues to include the basic tenets of the current House bill.
So, the Democrats and the President have extracted a change in momentum but I still believe it is short term and temporary. The trend continues to be against health care reform. It doesn't appear as though the Democrats have any desire to really moderate health care. Until and unless they do, health care reform will not happen. It remains to be seen if what comes out of the Energy Committee will be real moderation or merely window dressing. That will determine just how close we are to passing health care reform.
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Lisa
I agree with everything you say.
However, it's "montrosity", not "montrocity".
As our rights are infringed upon by our own government, Americans and those here legally will never benefit from a decent health care plan, owing to the abomination called ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION. By an Act in United States Congress passed in 1986, Hospital and ambulance services must provide care to anyone needing emergency treatment in spite of citizenship, legal status or capacity to pay. The predicament being that 20 million plus illegal immigrant families are using this law, for even minor ailments such as the common cold. Why should foreign nationals sign up for health care or anything, when they can get Taxpayers to pay for it all..?
But this is not just an American dilemma, as it has been forcibly imposed on subjects of the European Union. This is causing a major derailment in the EU, because both legal and illegal entrants are stealing away the single payer medical care providers, to the citizens who have paid into the system from the time they first started work.
A decent controlled governmental health care benefit, can—NEVER--be established, when a startling report disclosed the details of a cloaked meeting between nationwide businesses and open-borders groups working under the radical cover of the IMMIGRATIONWORKSUSA a lobbying group. The secret Capitol Hill National Summit" took place last month and revealed the sinister intention behind the lobbying entities efforts.
Tamar Jacoby, who runs ImmigrationWorksUSA, kicked off the conference by stating the true aspiration of the coalition. The basic target is to promote THE FREE FLOW OF LABOR INTO THE USA, with—AS ALWAYS-- the taxpayer being the beneficiary for corporate welfare. They want expedited cheap labor, where no American worker—NEED APPLY!
WE MUST ACT NOW, OR IT WILL BE TOO LATE! These special interest lobbyists are well furnished with money from corporate America. We must empower mandated E-Verify as part of the Save Act, where everybody is screened in the workplace. Call your lawmaker TODAY! at 202-224-3121 I Want a health care system--even government run. BUT IT"S SURE TO FAIL, IF TAXES ARE BEING EXTORTED TO PAY FOR FREE HEALTH CARE FOR ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS?
Millions of phone calls from angry Americans are jamming the Washington Switchboards. It is making these pandering politicians to corporate welfare, very anxious. Support for the bi-partisan E-VERIFY PART OF THE SAVE Act, which will expand E-Verify and protect American Workers! We must focus on the monolithic problem in terminating illegal immigrants-and the jobs that attract illegal aliens. WE WILL ALWAYS BE PAYING FOR ILLEGAL ALIENS, UNLESS WE DO SOMETHING NOW? Many GOP members are against a Path to citizenship for lawbreakers, so we mostly need the phones ringing in the ears of Democrats, who see the millions of illegal aliens as a positive voting block. WE MUST STOP IT NOW OF SUFFER FROM IRREVERSIBLE POPULATION GROWTH.
DEMAND NO AMNESTY! NO FAMILY UNIFICATION KNOWN AS CHAIN MIGRATION! BUILD THE ORIGINAL FENCE! NO MORE HEALTH CARE OR ANY OTHER KIND OF BENEFITS FOR ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS. CLOSE THE BORDER AND STATION THE NATIONAL GUARD. $2.5 TRILLION DOLLARS, JUST IN RETIREMENT BENEFITS? Learn uncorrupted facts at NUMBERSUSA.
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