Posted by
Patrick Henry on Monday, October 12, 2009 8:01:59 PM
Tomorrow the Senate Finance Committee will vote on the healthcare reform bill that Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT)
believes can receive the 60 votes needed to pass the Senate floor test that looms ahead. He is banking on three factors.
First, by deep-sixing the "public option" has has removed a huge obstacle for Republicans and Democratic moderates.
Second, by getting the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office to tender an opinion saying that the bill will reduce the
deficit over ten years, he placates those who have feared the cost of reform would be backbreaking. Third, he is
depending on "generalized language" to obscure loopholes in the bill that would be deal killers for many. Hopes are
running high at the White House and elsewhere on Capiytol Hill that now, finally, this will be the big breakthrough.
But as usual, there are some things they don't want Americans to know.
They don't want you to know that while the billions in tax increases necessary to fund the bill will take effect
immediately, the actual benefits to Americans will not kick in until 2013, four years down the road. So the plan
is to heap a significant extra tax burden on a nation where unemployment grows week-to-week and the ravages
of a deep recession are still a real economic facrtor for most families. "Pay as you go" seems to have given way
to "collect now, offer something in return much later."
They don't want you to notice that while the tax increases they are proposing are very real, the projected
savings in Medicare and Medicaid fraud and waste are theoretical. Oh. they're there all rigjht. Bit no administration
has yet been able to corral them. The Democrats answer? Just cut payments to Medicare and let the doctors
and hospitals figure out where the wate and fraud is. How many are stupid enough to really believe that this is
not going to cut benefits to seniors in the end? And what happens if the cost of the program and the taxes to
support it take shape, but the forecast savings do not? More deficit, seniors without benefits, doctors doing
something else for a living, hospitals closing their doors?
Obama and the Democrats don't want you to know that by refusing to put plain language in the bill to bar
federal dollars paying for abortions and bar illegal aliens from seeking coverage under it, they have left
gaping loopholes to ensure that it WILL happen. The truth is that they WANT it to happen. The Roman
Catholic Bishops are screaming that it will happen. The preponderance of public opinion is strongly against
both, but Obama and the Democrats think they know better than the poor, dumb voters.
They don't want you to know that there is a limit to their power to regulate nsurance premiums, and that
insurers will retain the right under the law to pass on the Draconian tax increases imposed on them by the
government to us as consumers. A recent Price/Waterhouse study suggests that under the Baucus Bill
premiums for an average family could jump by $1,700 annually, and for indivifuals by at least $600. Who
does Obama think he's kidding. His only goal is to insure the uninsured on the backs of the rest of us. He
just isn't honest enough to come right out and say so.
Finally, they don't want you to know that they still plan to slip the "public option" into the final version of
the bill, using either parliamentary maneuvers on the Senate floor, or the Senate-House conference committee
to do it behind closed doors. They are depending on being able to strongarm their moderate members by
threatening to hold back support for upcoming elections if they refuse to go along, They want their beloved
competition-killing public option, and they have every intention of getting it. The Baucus concession was
only designed to disgorge a bill from the committee quagmire.
Life has taught me a really important lesson. It's that when people are trying to hide things from you,
it's because they know you wouldn't like those things but they want to do them anyway. The theory is that
if you don't see it coming it won't hurt as bad. It was easier fighting King George in the 18th century
quest for freedom. At least he was honest!