Dem. Senator's Wife: Don't Read the Health Care Bill

Let's face it, most pundits on the left and right (including an amateur like me) produce columns which are largely interchangeable with the rest of their camp. They rarely introduce new insight or change someone's mind. That's not to say we don't try, but it's often an elusive goal. Recently, a headline over a column in my local paper and raised my hopes that I had stumbled across one of those mind-changing columns.

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for The [Cleveland] Plain Dealer and the wife of US Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). Schultz is unabashedly liberal and her columns sometime offer unique insights into the mindset of progressive leaders. If you have been following congressional politics for the last few months the notion that a liberal proponent of health care reform would recommend citizens actually read a bill is extraordinary.

Unfortunately, the column itself did not meet my expectations. Schultz's thesis was conservative commentators were misrepresenting the provision of the bill calling for mandatory end of life counseling and scaring seniors. I would argue Schultz was misrepresenting what the conservative commentators said. Regardless, the column did not contain any language imploring people read the bill.

The fact the body of a column and the headline were not "calibrated" is not very significant. Columnists rarely write their own headlines. Forgetting PR strategies and legislative tactics for a moment, "Read the health care bill" should be as controversial as "Eat more vegetables" or "The sky is blue" or "I love mom". Who could possibly take issue with innocuous throwaway lines like these?

Here's the condensed version, to be found on www.worldmag.com, that highlights provisions in the 1,017 page healthcare bill. To quote:

..The government will audit your books if you self-insure.

The newly created Commissioner will submit a report to the government that includes "any recommendation the Commissioner deems appropriate to ensure that the law DOES NOT PROVIDE incentives for small and mid-size employers to self-insure." (21.23-23.3)

This is just one of 17 provisions that WORLD has summarized and posted to its website, www.worldmag.com, found under Washington's Prescription, The Editors, Healthcare.

Excellent material for information and hand-out. This is an absolute outrage.

Others: The government will define your "health benefits" ... will ration your care ... will establish and administer a public health insurance program ... will define how doctors manage their time ... will tax employers for not providing healthcare ... will tax individuals unless you are a foreign resident ... will order you to get end-of-life counseling and show proof ... will limit your hospital readmissions by penalizing hospitals ... will restrict coverage of special needs patients ... will not let you sue over coverage limits and costs decisions ... will mandate what physicians make ... will have access to your bank accounts ... will not call the fees it imposes taxes ... will issue you a health ID card ... will enlist or create outreach programs like ACORN to sign-up individuals in government-run plan; will create a new bureaucracy to include phone healthcare. References with page numbers and line items are given each provision.

Alan Grayson, my rep in Orange Co. FL isn't letting on to his constituents as to whether or not he is going to bestow them with the great gift of an audience with him.

I got a bunch of friends and relatives to e-mail him about Government-Run(into the ground)Healthcare and we all got the same form-letter back saying he would take our comments into consideration.

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