Health Care Reform in the News: 12-23-2009

Health care bill clears last hurdle before passage

Exultant Senate Democrats pushed President Barack Obama’s landmark health care overhaul past a final procedural hurdle Wednesday, setting up a Christmas Eve vote to pass the legislation extending coverage to 30 million Americans.

Democrats voted 60-39 to end a GOP filibuster and move to a final vote Thursday. All 58 Democrats and two independents hung together against unanimous Republican opposition.

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For Their Next Trick . . .

Look for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to try to circumvent the traditional conference committee process by which the different versions of health care reform passed by each house will be reconciled. If so, it will be the latest example of violating principles of transparency and accountability in the single-minded pursuit of legislative victory.

Conferences involving members from both houses are messy things. They are usually conducted in public and often televised, and can produce a compromise version of the bill that leaves rank-and-file members tempted to vote against the final version. That could be perilous in the case of health care since it’s likely to pass without a vote to spare in the Senate and the House’s version passed by only five votes.

North Dakota Senator Kent Conrad, chair of the Budget Committee, has already warned that if the final bill “isn’t close to the Senate bill, there will be no way to get the 60 votes here” to shut off debate and pass the final product. But many House members, led by Michigan Rep. John Conyers, are insisting on major changes in the Senate’s version.

Mr. Reid and Ms. Pelosi would love to come up with a way to bash heads in private and skip any public discussion that further reveals just how incoherent and unworkable both the bills are. Luckily, there is a subterfuge readily available that wouldn’t require the House to swallow the Senate’s bill unchanged but also ducks the traditional give-and-take of the conference committee.

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Harry Reid’s problem with basic math

Yesterday morning, Harry Reid took the podium to broadcast his personal victory, that cost hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes to create, and said the following,

Much of our attention this year has been consumed by this health care debate. And a Harvard study found that 45,000 times this year – nearly 900 times every week, more than 120 times a day, on average every 10 minutes, without end – an American died as a direct result of not having health insurance.

While many might be thrilled with the Senate Leader’s great victory, some of us who can do math, are greatly concerted about Harry Reid’s figuring. It seems to me that the Senate Leader’s concern is amiss.

Using figures that Reid gave, by my math, if every ten minutes an American dies that’s 144 Americans each day. Since the bill, should it become law, doesn’t take place until 2013, it seems that more than 210,240 Americans stand to die before one person is “helped”. If Reid were really worried about dying Americans he ought to be stunned that waiting four years will cost the lives of over 200,000 Americans. But I guess that Reid and his cohorts are still chortling about the numbers of additional Medicare folks who will be removed from voting roles due to cuts in their health care.

But, Mr. Reid, you ought to be excited about all us “older” folks, real voters, and real knowledgeable about election consequences, being gone from the scene, due to Medicare cuts. But maybe that’s the Democrats’ intention to begin with. If you shove off the old folks you can build an entitlement class from the ground up and enslave all of them!

Tagged as: Big Government, Democrats' Healthcare Plan, Government Run Healthcare, H.R.3590: Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Health Care, Health Care Reform, Obamacare, Public Option, Single Payer, Universal Health Care