The speeding bullet of Health Care Reform
President Obama wants a Health Care Reform Bill in front of him for his signature before he speaks to the nation for the State of the Union Address in February (as reported by CBS, Fox News and other media). It’s a tall order. But the question is what this means to the public.
If House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid are able to comply with the desire from the White House it will mean that closed door meetings among an unknown group of individuals will have succeeded in destroying any remote claim of bipartisanship. The resulting Bill will be 100% Democrat created, modified, and approved. Which is fine, if it achiecves it’s purpose in a cost-effective manner.
But when a Bill of this magnitude is finalized in secret, on a schedule that can only be compared to a speeding bullet, the question of where that bullet is going must be posed.
These are but a few of the questions that have circled the Health Care Reform Bill since August 2009. In all that time there has been no clear answer to any of these questions, often with any answer changing from version to version. In all that time not a single supporter has been able to summarize the entire Bill and its functions in a simple description. In fact a number of major supporters in Congress REFUSED to discuss the Bill at all with constituents.
Perhaps the most troubling question about the Health Care Reform Bill is the most basic question of all. What does the Bill say? It’s a question that cannot be honestly answered as few have had a chance to read through all 2000+ pages (depending on which version you can get a copy of), though more than a few elected officials have never bothered to try to read the Bill, ever. But the final version being created by Pelosi and Reid will barely have time to have the ink dry before being signed into law by President Obama.
The lessons of the Obama Stimulus, passed with lightning speed and acknowledged as unread by the overwhelming majority of Congress, surely clarifies that the lack of proofreading (to say nothing of transparency) is not to the advantage of the public. One example of this would be the $38 million in food stamps that were denied to 344,000 American families due to the speedy passage. Due to the nature and scope of the Health Care Reform, similar oversights not only means extra costs and unintended complications but potentially could cost lives.
Will the final Health Care Reform Bill be a positive for the public? Is a Bill that required hundreds of billions of dollars in “special deals” to elected officials more than a used car sales pitch? We may only find out after President Obama signs the Bill into law, but by then the damage may have already been done.
Contact your local Congressional representative and ask them, “What does the health Care Reform Bill say?”
