By IT I mean the Senates Health Care bill passed on Christmas Eve.
Left or Right
The left doesn’t like the public option is removed.
The right doesn’t like it that it is forcing ALL Americans to buy health care insurance or face financial penalties.
The left blogs are slamming it. The right blogs are slamming it. Anyone out there like it? Do you?
“Forcing every American to purchase a product is absolutely inconsistent with our Constitution and the freedoms our Founding Fathers hoped to protect,” said Senator DeMint.
Americans who fail to buy health insurance, according to the Democrats’ bill, would be subject to financial penalties. The insurance mandate is not authorized by any of the limited enumerated powers granted to the federal government.
The Congressional Budget Office once stated “A mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action. The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States.”
A legal study by scholars at the nonpartisan Heritage Foundation concluded: “An individual mandate to enter into a contract with or buy a particular product from a private party, with tax penalties to enforce it, is unprecedented– not just in scope but in kind–and unconstitutional as a matter of first principles and under any reasonable reading of judicial precedents.”
What could have or should have happened?
In my humble opinion T I M E and C O M P R O M I S E
The Wyden-Bennett bill proposed in 2007 and 2009 would have been a nice compromise. The Wyden-Bennett Bill would have required 15 Senate Co Sponsors with would have included five Republicans. Or even better Senator Tom Colburns Bill who is also a physician from Oklahoma Bill.
Senator Ron Wyden, from Blue State Oregon, is a long time Liberal, Bob Bennett, from Red State Utah, a Conservative. Under the Wyden-Bennett bill, health dollars would be controlled by the individual (conservative) and used within a restructured, heavily regulated, totally universal, insurance marketplace ( liberal goal).
Instead of achieving Bi-partisan support and a compromise for both sides, we are left with a Senate Bill that no one likes but was passed for political reasons on Christmas Eve. Now the House and Senate will fight it out, compromise? to get something on the table for President Obama to sign.
…and how about this?
Senator Jim DeMint pointed out some astonishing language on page 1020, subsection C of the Senate Bill concerning the Medicare Advisory Board that is can not be changed by future Congresses.
“it shall not be in order in the senate or the house of representatives to consider any bill, resolution, amendment, or conference report that would repeal or otherwise change this subsection.”
To my knowledge there has never been any legislation passed by any Congress that prohibits future Senates to change previously enacted laws.
Too bad, business is usual in Washington, not the nonpartisan, open debate, no earmarks legislation on one of the biggest issues facing us at this time. Yes, we all want Health Care Reform and that is a nonpartisan goal.
The fun continues into 2010… Happy New Year.
