Who Likes The Obama/Pelosi/Reid Health Care Reform Bills? (Besides Obama/Pelosi/Reid)

I get so tired about talking about the pathetic and dangerous health care reform bills that are before Congress but it seems it is the right thing to do since many, many other Americans do not like the current effort either. Consider the following information that was communicated by a David Broder article of the Washington Post Writers Group as published in the in the St. Petersburg Times today:

• According to a poll by Quinninpiac University, when asked if President Obama would be able to keep his promise that going forward with the current health care reform bills will not add to the Federal deficit, less than one in five of those polled thought he could keep that promise. Nine out ten Republicans, eight out of ten independents and four out of seven Democrats said that he would not be able to keep his promise and the Federal deficit would increase as a result of these bills. The poll was of a cross section of Americans and was conducted shortly after the Senate voted this weekend to move the proposed Senate bill to the floor for debate.
• In that same poll, the majority, by a 16 point difference, said they oppose the legislation currently in front of Congress.
• Mr. Broder cites the findings of the bipartisan budget watchdog group, the Concord Coalition, which says the Senate bill is better than the House version but neither is really a reform bill, they are both a big change in entitlement programs and tax increases.
• Maya MacGuineas of the bipartisan Committee For A Responsible Federal Budget, also feels that the bills will increase the Federal deficit and that Congress will not have the guts to cut other spending or raise taxes to compensate.
• Although not bipartisan, Republican budget experts including Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former head of the Congressional Budget Office, identified budget tricks that kept the total costs of the reform bills lower than they actually will be. In fact, in the Senate bill, there is actually language stating that"federal outlays for health care would increase during the 2010-2019 period." This increase will come at a time when the Obama administration has already outspent its 2009 revenue by $1.42 TRILLION. Thus, before the bills are even passed, the Senate acknowledges it will increase the deficits for the foreseeable future.
• This deficit scenario will get even worse if Congress does not actually follow through with the hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicare cuts, cuts they have never had the stomach to do before, that are called for in these bills.

Less than two days after the Senate voted to move their bill to the floor for debate, without a vote to spare, four non-Republican Senators, Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln and Joe Lieberman are already balking and threatening to not vote for the bill after debate and amendments because of the bill's faults.

Combine these facts from Mr. Broder's article and the potential rebellion of the above four Senators, with the poll from the Rasmussen Group last month that showed 54% of Americans were against the current bills, far out polling those that were for it. Add on the fact that the Massachusetts law to provide universal health care to its citizens, along the same lines as the current Federal bills, is already awash in red ink just a few years after it started. (see past posts for details about both). These are bad bills in so many ways:

• They will break the budget or result in onerous tax increases on all of us, our children and our grandchildren and not just on the rich.
• They are anti-freedom in that the government will impose its will on it citizens by forcing everyone to pay for health insurance even if they do not need it or are willing to take the risk of not having it.
• Obama/Pelosi/Reid never identified the root cause(s) of escalating health care costs and crafted legislation to address the root causes. Without identifying the underlying problem, you have little more than a crap shoot of solving the problem.
• Neither bill addresses tort reform in the medical malpractice area, an area that several states have seen massive drops in health care costs once they instituted tort reform.

The only solution is to start over since the current effort has degenerated into a political morass with the Democrats wanting to pass any kind of bill, regardless of how bad it is, and the Republicans trying to do anything they can to stop them. The problem and the country are now a secondary concern to the political class. It is best to start over again as proposed by Step 28 in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government." We need to get smart Americans involved to tackle this problem and get the politicians and lobbyists out of the equation.

Visit our website at www.loathemygovernment.com to order an autographed copy of the book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government -Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom and Destroying The American Political Class" and to sign up for the cause. The book is also available online at Amazon and Barnes And Noble.