*Final* Health Care Bill released ... NOT!

[BeAChooser]

Enough to start a discussion?

<crickets>

The silence says volumes.

 

[tyr_13]

So, let's see ... the democrat party's explanation for refusing to publish a bill they've essentially written 72 hours before any vote is taken, so that Congressmen and the American public can know for sure what they are voting on, is that it's so incompressible that not even they can/will read it and because they think anyone who does attempt to read it must be a fool.

And God save us from fools, right?

Anyone who hasn't been following the amendments and process in committee who tries to start reading it now is a fool and is unlikely to be able to understand it. They were supposed to be following it as it went along.

Congratulations. You've pointed out how committee bills work and claimed it is something unique to the health care bill. Alarmist much?

 

[Alareth]

Quick! We need an expert to explain the process!

 

[BeAChooser]

Anyone who hasn't been following the amendments and process in committee who tries to start reading it now is a fool and is unlikely to be able to understand it. They were supposed to be following it as it went along.

Nice try at SPIN. But you're only helping me make my case.

By the way,

http://www.cnsnews.com/Public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=43478

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) predicted on Thursday that none of his Senate colleagues would "have the chance" to read the entire final version of the $790-billion stimulus bill before the bill comes up for a final vote in Congress.

Hey! Maybe that's why the stimulus DID NOT WORK.

http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=50234

June 29, 2009

On the Spot (CNSNews.com) – Almost all of the House members surveyed Friday by CNSNews.com had not read the entire 1,200-page climate-change bill before they were to cast their vote Friday evening. But almost all of them knew how they were going to vote.

Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) said that he supported the bill the House was considering (and subsequently approved Friday evening by a narrow 219-212 vote), but he had not read the whole bill.

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P3-1411623901.html

Every taxpayer should have witnessed the testy exchange on the Senate floor last week between Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin (D.-Ill.) and the chairman of the conservative Senate Republican Steering Committee, Jim DeMint (S.C.). Conservatives were frustrated by the haste with which Congress was acting on the 3,417-page, $554.7-billion "omnibus" spending bill. Among other things, it weighed 34 pounds and contained approximately 9,800 special-interest earmarks.

"We like to say we are the world's most deliberative body," DeMint reminded his colleagues, but "on the largest [and most expensive] bill we have ever considered ... we don't even know what is in the bill."

http://blog.heritage.org/2009/07/21/morning-bell-obama-admits-hes-not-familiar-with-house-bill/

It is truly frightening that the President of the United States is pressuring Congress in an all-out media blitz to pass legislation that he flatly admits he has not read and is not familiar with.

Everyone starting to get the picture ... starting to see the pattern?

Is this really the type of *change* you voted for?

And by the way, there are also Republicans who haven't read some of these bills in their entirety. However, all they have to do is find a make or break problem with the bill to rationally vote no. To vote yes, you really should know what you are voting yes on. I can't fathom why certain folks at JREF have problems with this notion. Well, on second thought, I do know why they have problems with this notion.

 

[BeAChooser]

Quick! We need an expert to explain the process!

Nah, you just need to address some of those specific issues I raised about the bill's contents. For starters.

 

[psychictv]

What "final" bill? There is no final bill. There are like 5 different bills. Once this Senate Finance Committee bill comes out of committee it will be totally rewritten (thankfully). Relax. It's not over yet.

 

[David Wong]

Meanwhile, the administration is winning the debate with the public:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/123470/Opposition-Healthcare-Legislation-Drops-Modestly.aspx

Opposition has steadily eroded, from 47% down to just 41% against. And that's pretty amazing, considering there's a solid 35% of the public who would vote against Oxygen itself if they thought it would be considered a "win" for Barack Hussein Obama to keep it around.

A huge campaign was waged to try to kill this thing, but it really does seem like in time they have gotten the word out.

 

[Dancing David]

So the same people who supported the blind process of passing the Patriot Act and lots and lots and lots of legislation are sudeenly concerned about transparency?

Figures.

Never care about the process enough to complain about it until you are the party out of power.

 

[WildCat]

Quick! We need an expert to explain the process!

 

[tyr_13]

Nice try at SPIN. But you're only helping me make my case.

By the way,

http://www.cnsnews.com/Public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=43478



Hey! Maybe that's why the stimulus DID NOT WORK.

http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=50234



http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P3-1411623901.html



http://blog.heritage.org/2009/07/21/morning-bell-obama-admits-hes-not-familiar-with-house-bill/



Everyone starting to get the picture ... starting to see the pattern?

Is this really the type of *change* you voted for?

And by the way, there are also Republicans who haven't read some of these bills in their entirety. However, all they have to do is find a make or break problem with the bill to rationally vote no. To vote yes, you really should know what you are voting yes on. I can't fathom why certain folks at JREF have problems with this notion. Well, on second thought, I do know why they have problems with this notion.

Yes, I see a pattern. You get called out on your alarmist and liberal bashing spin on a normal, standard process and you hand wave it with more alarmist quotes and as spin.

Bill has taught you well. Your only problem is that this isn't the ct board.

 

[mhaze]

What "final" bill? There is no final bill. There are like 5 different bills. Once this Senate Finance Committee bill comes out of committee it will be totally rewritten (thankfully). Relax. It's not over yet.

That is irrelevant. The issue is posting publicly the final form of bills being voted on in committee.

Everyone knows the process from that point forward.

 

[BeAChooser]

So the same people who supported the blind process of passing the Patriot Act and lots and lots and lots of legislation are sudeenly concerned about transparency?

David, this thread isn't about the Patriot Act, even if I do agree with you regarding some aspects of that. It's about what democrats are now doing with regard to healthcare (and other massive social engineering programs). Beside, compared to the health care bill (and all the other big legislation Obama and democrats have rushed through since January), the Patriot Act was peanuts. It didn't require massive calculations of fiscal impact. And it's language was comparatively comprehensible. And unlike health care, the problem that the Patriot Act addressed actually was urgent. We'd just suffered the 9/11 attack and there was every expectation that more would follow unless we took immediate steps. This bill's provisions won't even begin to take effect until 2013. And there is one more difference, David. Unlike so many other federal government programs (War on Poverty, War on Drugs, Medicare, Medicaid, Public Education), the Patriot Act actually appears to have worked. Although now democrats are in the process of gutting that too.

And by the way ... we weren't the ones who made "transparency" such a big issue. That was Obama. Guess he was just using it for political gain and didn't really mean what he said. Right?

 

[BeAChooser]

Anyone notice that not one of the Obamacare supporters on this thread has so far challenged anything I wrote in post #13 regarding the contents of the bill? Perhaps they agree with me? Or perhaps they wish to remain as ignorant of the details as ... well ... congresscritters like democrat Senator Thomas Carper?

In either case, here's another comment/question they can ignore.

First the facts ...

http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Daily-Reports/2009/October/03/senate-finance-final-bill.aspx

"Before it finished work at 2:15 a.m. Friday, the committee voted to reduce penalties on people who go without insurance. The maximum penalty for a family was cut to $800, from $1,900, and it would be phased in gradually from 2014 to 2017"

Now the question ...

Is an $800 yearly penalty (per family!) for not getting insurance really much of a penalty? Seems to me that one could just pay the $800 penalty (an excise tax, according to Senator Baucus) each year and still expect that when one shows up at an ER with an emergency of any kind, one would still be given treatment ... for exactly the same reasons that liberals now insist they must be given free treatment for all problems. Why would I not wait until I got sick or injured to buy insurance?

If at some point one develops a serious long term health problem, then one could sign up. This would save the average persons many, many thousands of dollars a year until then. There aren't even going to be criminal penalties for people who go without insurance (in the same adopted amendment). And by the way, the full penalty doesn't take effect until 2017! So until then, for sure, let the good times roll.

Furthermore, the committee also adopted an amendment that would exempt individuals from the coverage mandate if insurance costs would exceed 8 percent of their annual income. This supposedly exempts 2 million people from having to buy pay anything for the insurance. But I suspect it exempts far more than 2 million people. After all, are they counting all those illegal immigrants that are going to be getting insurance for free because democrats voted down an amendment to demand proof of citizenship to get insurance?

 

[BeAChooser]

Yes, let's talk a little about those other versions of the bill:

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/blog/tag/diagnosis/house-bill

The House Bill: A $10 Trillion Unfunded Liability

... snip ...

In a July 26 letter to the Ranking Republicans on four key committees (Ways and Means, Energy and Commerce, Education and Labor, and Budget), the Director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), Doug Elmendorf, made it clearer than he ever had before that the bill, in its original July 14 form, would dramatically widen the already large gap between long-term government revenue and spending.

... snip ...

In other words, CBO expects the spending in the bill would grow at a rate of least 8 percent annually into the indefinite future, while the revenue to pay for it will only grow at about 5 per cent per year. Hence the “substantial increases” in federal budget deficits beyond 2019.

Although CBO declined to specify any actual deficit numbers beyond 2019, they can be easily calculated, in rough terms, from the information provided in Elmendorf’s letter.

... snip ...

Assuming a discount rate of 5.7 percent per year, the bill would add more than $10 trillion over seventy-five years in new unfunded government obligations.

... snip ...

CBO recently projected that the federal budget deficit is already on track to reach nearly 15 percent of GDP in 2035, well above the historical average of about 2 to 2.5 percent. The last thing Congress should be doing is making the problem worse with new runaway costs.

You going to sweep this concern under the rug, Obamacare supporters?

 

[BeAChooser]

Anyone notice this news item?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/02/health/policy/02health.html

Describing his health care platform in New Hampshire in September 2008, Mr. Obama said: “Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.”
Republicans tried to amend the legislation to comply with that pledge, but the proposal was rejected, 12 to 11.

“This is a killer amendment,” Mr. Baucus said. “It would gut the president’s program of health care reform.”

Isn't this tacit admission that the President lied to us yet again? That democrats are going to tax families making less than $250,000? And don't try to tell me it's not a "tax". Senator Baucus, himself, calls some of these penalties "taxes". And, according to the NYTimes,

more than 60 House Democrats, led by Representative Joe Courtney of Connecticut, told Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday that they opposed the tax because it would fall on many middle-income families.

So are you ok with Obama having lied to us again?

(And who know what other taxes will be slipped into the final final bill.)

 

[Meadmaker]

Anyone notice this news item?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/02/health/policy/02health.html



Isn't this tacit admission that the President lied to us yet again? That democrats are going to tax families making less than $250,000? And don't try to tell me it's not a "tax". Senator Baucus, himself, calls some of these penalties "taxes". And, according to the NYTimes,



So are you ok with Obama having lied to us again?

(And who know what other taxes will be slipped into the final final bill.)

Every successful presidential candidate since I have been able to vote has lied to us. While they have been running for office, they either said that they would not raise taxes, but then raised them, or they said that they would cut taxes, but that wouldn't cause additional debt.

The most famous of the first form of lie was from George "read my lips" Bush.

By contrast, Walter Mondale told the truth, and won Minnesota....barely.

Bill Clinton was the most truthful successful candidate. He didn't pledge to avoid a tax increase, although he avoided the subject every chance he got.

So, yes, it disturbs me that Obama lied, and make no mistake he did lie. He knew very well, even before the financial meltdown, that there was no way to provide universal health care, make progress on the debt, and avoid extra cost of some sort for the middle class. There's absolutely no way it can be done. Unfortunately, 30 years of blatant lieing by presidential candidates has been consistently rewarded, so what's a polititician to do?

 

[mhaze]

Yeah, that Bush #1 guy, that liar? That one-term president?

And the rationalizations commence.

How's that hope and change doing for you with Bush #3, by the way?

 

[BeAChooser]

Bill Clinton was the most truthful successful candidate.

LOL!

 

[mhaze]

The Hindenburg of Health Care is Landing

LOL!

How's that Hindenburg of Healthcare doing, anyway? Let's see...

 

[psychictv]

That is irrelevant. The issue is posting publicly the final form of bills being voted on in committee.

Why? What do you care if it's going to be totally rewritten anyway? The answer is, of course you don't care to read it, you're just finding any excuse to try and obstruct the process.

Everyone knows the process from that point forward.

Apparently not.