Posted on 06/18/2009 5:10:35 AM PDT by reaganaut1
Partisan anger flared Wednesday as senators began the public drafting of legislation to remake the health care system. By day’s end, lawmakers had settled in for a long, hard slog that may not fit with President Obama’s goal of signing a bill within four months.
...
Another Senate committee, dogged by questions about the cost and complexity of the legislation, postponed its session, scheduled for next Tuesday, until after July 4. Democrats said they needed the delay by the Finance Committee to work on reducing the cost of the bill, intended to provide insurance to millions of people with no coverage.
...
Senator Michael B. Enzi of Wyoming, the senior Republican on the health committee, said the panel was moving “too fast to do an adequate job.”
Mr. Dodd said, “I appreciate the frustrations being expressed,” but plowed ahead. “We have a moral imperative to act,” he said.
Mr. Enzi said the bill had been drafted “with no input from Republicans,” and he asserted, “The bill costs too much, covers too few and will cause 10 million Americans to lose the insurance they currently enjoy.”
A preliminary estimate by the Congressional Budget Office said the bill would cost $1 trillion over 10 years but leave many uninsured. The office said an early version of the Finance Committee bill would cost $1.6 trillion.
Senate Democrats conceded that the unexpectedly high estimates had forced them to regroup, and acknowledged that they were still divided over how to pay for the legislation.
...
Mr. Gregg said the Kennedy bill looked as if it had been written by Rube Goldberg, Karl Marx and Ira C. Magaziner, Mr. Clinton’s health care coordinator. Mr. Gregg criticized a provision that would establish a Medical Advisory Council to recommend minimum benefits for insurance policies.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The left wants to force 40 million people pay for healthcare who don’t want it, then force 10 million people who have healthcare to give it up, while still paying for it I assume.
Sounds typical.
Partisan my ass, stand up for what is right.
The dims want to push this through as a “tribute” to Teddy the Drunk before he meets his final accounting.
What "moral imperative"? Where are the people dying in the streets for lack of health care? Where are the children dying and getting sick because they can't see a doctor?
I truly despise Dodd. The only moral imperative involving Dodd is to get him out of office.
I heard an interview that Sean Hannity had with Lindsey Graham about the health bill and there is legitimate grounds for concern. According to Graham, there are literally blank spaces in the current draft bill that even the Dems haven’t been able to figure out.
The general consensus among ‘Pubbies and growing number of Dems is that zero’s universal health care plan (socialized medicine) is unsustainable and is a pipe dream. According to Congressional insiders, more and more Dems are backing away from zero and his plans because they are hearing in record numbers from their constitutents - ESPECIALLY those in rural America - that voters aren’t happy and there will be a massive backlash coming next year if the Congress doesn’t apply the brakes. Even staunch Dem Max Baucus is backing away from the current universal health care ‘plan’ by wanting to cut $600 Billion out of the cost of what Dems are describing as just the framework for the plan.
Stay tuned. There’s a lot more ugly to go on all of this!!
(Keep the popcorn popper warmed up!)
Insane world alert:
Senators are not qualified to work on a “health bill”. Doctors are.
Plumbers aren’t qualified to do electric wiring.
Artist don’t do math well.
Fork lift drivers don’t fly airplanes well.
Etc.
Etc.
One of the first things to do after the return to constitutional government is to take away the humongous staffs and tremendous budgets these pork-pushers in DC have awarded to themselves. A staff of three and a budget no larger than their own salary is more than enough. They should get off their thrones and go back to actually doing the work they are elected to do.
These huge, unreadable bills are written by lobbyists or their staffs (who are in the pocket of lobbyists).
The idiot Senators and Congressmen pushing them have little idea of the real content or impact.
If they had to write their own bills and were held responsible to understand the content, the average size of the bills would drop to a few pages and the numbers of bills proposed would probably drop to 10% of the current volume.
If the sponsor of a bill cannot explain the content, impact, cost and where the money will come from a bill should not even be put up for consideration.
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