forgottenliberty.com

Despite President Obama’s recent rhetoric about reaching out to Republicans and getting their input on health care reform, a sneaky plan is underway to pass health care without any help from Republicans.  Wendell Primus, the top health care adviser to Nancy Pelosi, believes it can be passed by Easter.  If I’m understanding the complicated and tricky plan correctly, the House would pass the Senate bill, Obama would sign the Senate bill, then the House would pass another bill changing the Senate version.  According to Anna Edney of CongressDaily,

House Speaker Pelosi’s top healthcare adviser today outlined a plan that would allow both chambers to make changes to the Senate healthcare overhaul before the overhaul becomes law.

Wendell Primus said the plan is to have President Obama sign the Senate bill before signing the legislation making the changes, even though Congress will approve them in reverse to satisfy skeptical House members who refuse to pass the Senate bill before changes are made.

“The trick in all of this is that the president would have to sign the Senate bill first, then the reconciliation bill second, and the reconciliation bill would trump the Senate bill,” Wendell Primus, told health policy experts gathered at the National Health Policy Conference hosted by AcademyHealth and Health Affairs.

Some have questioned whether rules would allow Congress to pass changes to a bill that is not yet law. House members have insisted both chambers approve the changes, which likely will go through the reconciliation process to require 51 votes rather than the 60-vote supermajority in the Senate, before they pass they Senate bill.

[snip]

Negotiators first must agree on changes.

The Senate parliamentarian still needs to weigh in, he added.

Despite all these complications, Primus said, lawmakers will be “very close to being done” with an overhaul by Easter recess.

The 2000 plus page health care bill does not appear to be dead as most of us had hoped.  I’m not sure if this whole process can be pulled off or even if it is legal, but it does show how desperate Progressives like Pelosi are to have a government takeover of our health care system.

It’s all Bush’s Rahm Emanuel’s fault!  Democrats, angry about the collapse of health care reform, are breaking from their usual mantra of blaming everything on George Bush, and are turning their attention to Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel.  Instead of correctly realizing that the American people do not want more government involvement in their health care, Democrats are looking for another scapegoat to put the blame on.  According to The Hill,

The emerging consensus among critics in both chambers is that Emanuel’s lack of Senate experience slowed President Barack Obama’s top domestic priority.

The share of the blame comes as cracks are beginning to show in Emanuel’s once-impregnable political armor

Why do liberals always need someone to blame?  Why can’t they take responsibility for their actions and admit that the American people are rejecting a socialist/progressive agenda?  I’m no fan of Emanuel, but to put the blame on him for the health care debacle is wrong.  According to the same article from The Hill,

With Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts, the only viable option left to Democrats in regards to health care is for the house to pass the Senate version of the bill without making any changes to it.  I thought there was a good chance of this happening, but I may have been wrong.  A day or two ago, Nancy Pelosi seemed very confident that the Congress would pass health care legislation in time for Obama’s State of the Union.  However, today she made an interesting statement about health care,

I don’t think it’s possible to pass the Senate bill in the House,” Pelosi told reporters after a morning meeting with her caucus. “I don’t see the votes for it at this time.

If the House doesn’t pass the Senate version of the bill in it’s entirety, an amended bill would have to be sent back to the Senate for passage.  The Democrats, thanks to Scott Brown and the voters of Massachusetts, no longer have the 60 votes needed to stop a Republican filibuster, so an amended bill would most likely die in the Senate.  This means there is little chance of health care passing.

Is it possible that the 2000 plus page health care bill is finally dead?  After all the angry town hall meetings and protests, after all the polls showing plummeting support for the legislation along with plummeting support for Obama and Congress.. is it really over?  Have enough democrats in the House woken up to the fact that they were destroying their political careers by following the Obama, Pelosi, and Reid agenda?  It appears so, but I am still a little skeptical.  While I am hopeful that this battle is finally won, it’s still a little to early to celebrate.  Never underestimate liberal trickery.

Wouldn’t it be great though if health care was given it’s final blow by the Democrat stronghold of Massachusetts?

Why are the Democrats so insistent on passing the current health care bill?  Is it to ensure coverage for all Americans?  No, because the current bill will still leave 23 million people uninsured.  That’s the entire combined population of Pennsylvania and Ohio left without insurance.

Is it because the American people are in favor of the legislation?  No, because only 40% of Americans are in favor of the current bill with only 19% strongly in favor of it.  55% oppose the bill with 45% strongly opposed.

Is it to lower health care costs for all Americans?  No, because this bill will actually raise health care costs by 289 billion dollars over the next 10 years.  Even Democrat Senator Mark Warner admitted that the Senate bill (which raises costs less than the house bill) doesn’t do enough to reduce costs,

“On cost containment, this bill moves the ball to the opponent’s 30-yard line, but it doesn’t score,” said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., who has taken a leading role in trying to squeeze more savings. “We didn’t move as far as I would have liked.”

So if this bill does not cover everyone, does not have the support of the American people, and does not reduce our health care costs, why are Democrats so desperate to pass it?  I can give you the answer in one word— power.

I’ve watched a lot of C-span in the last couple of weeks while the Senate was debating their health care bill.  I noticed a reoccurring theme from almost every Democrat Senator who spoke on the floor.  The theme was that health care is a right.  Sen. Harkin (D-Iowa) even went as far as saying health care is an unalienable right!  When did this happen?  When did a service or product become a right?  How is it even possible?  Health care can not be a right and I will explain why.

Reason 1

First, we must identify what a right is, or more specifically, an unalienable right.  Historically, Americans believed an unalienable right is one that is not given to us by our government but is inherent and given to us by our Creator.  In other words, we were born with unalienable rights and these rights can not be taken away.  This is illustrated in the Declaration of Independence,

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men…

According to the Declaration of Independence, the government’s job is to secure (meaning to protect) our rights, not grant them!

So we now know that an unalienable right is not given to us by a government but is something we are born with because it is given to us by our Creator.  This begs the question, “Are we born with a right to health care?” 

In my last post, I expressed my concern that Sen. Ben Nelson was not standing on principle but was holding out for some money to be thrown at him in exchange for his vote on the Senate health care bill.  Well, it seems I was right to be concerned.  Yesterday he announced that he would vote for cloture on the bill after he, according to the Washington Post,

secured full and permanent federal funding for his state to extend Medicaid eligibility to everyone below 133 percent of the federal poverty level. The bill would require all states to do so, but Nebraska alone would not be required to pay a portion of the additional cost after 2016.

If this bill passes, our hard earned tax money will be disproportionately spent on Nebraska’s Medicaid recipients as a way to buy off Sen. Ben Nelson.  This is corruption, plain and simple.  Nelson is just the latest Congressman to have been given a large amount of our tax dollars in exchange for their vote.  This type of behavior needs to stop.  Our Republic was never meant to be governed this way.  This is a disgrace!  The will of the American people is being ignored so Congressmen can stay in power by securing favors for their constituents.

In addition to Nelson, Sen. Sanders (I-VT.) and Sen. Leahy (D-VT.) are receiving 10 billion in new funding for community health centers and more Medicaid funding.  Sen. Levin (D-Mich) is receiving a Medicaid deal similar to Nelson, and Sen. Landrieu (D-LA) is receiving 300 million in Medicaid funding.

Our government is spending billions of dollars that we don’t have to buy votes for a bill that the majority of Americans do not want!  Is this the hope and change we were promised?  Is this the new era of politics that President Obama was supposed to usher in?