Free Republic

The Senate voted to kill a House-approved bill to raise the debt ceiling, leaving the ball in the court of Senate leadership to produce a deficit reduction bill, with just days before the Aug. 2 deadline. The vote was 59-41. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid followed through on his promise to kill the bill, pushed through the House a day late by House Speaker John Boehner. The White House, which has thrown its weight behind a Reid proposal, had promised to veto the bill had it miraculously passed the Senate. The Senate also killed the Cut, Cap, Balance Act last...

University of Chicago Law Professor Richard A Epstein has brilliantly argued that the Reid bill unconstitutionally turns private health insurers into public utilities. Luckily for those who haven't time to study his detailed argument, he's now summarized it nicely in the Wall Street Journal: "As Harry Reid's 2,000 page health-care bill is being rammed through the Senate, most of the public debate has been focused on its expanded coverage, its now defunct public option, and its high taxes. Lost in the shuffle has been its intensely coercive requirements on health insurance issuers, especially in the individual and small group markets....

We have criticized the American Cancer Society (ACS) for wading into the political fight over health care through its “advocacy affiliate,” the . In the clearest evidence yet that politics has replaced ACS’s core mission of fighting cancer, ACSCAN took part in a press conference this week to support “upcoming cloture votes on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.”  In other words, ACSCAN wants the Reid bill backed by Barack Obama. Now comes Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), a practicing physician, with an op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal that details just what ObamaCare might mean for cancer victims. He...