Posted by
Patrick Bohan on Sunday, November 08, 2009 7:49:14 PM
The House of Representatives passed their version of ObamaCare 220 to 215. Restrictions on using federal funding for abortions may have helped to get the last few conservative Democrats to side with the bill. Only one Republican, Joseph Cao, voted for the bill. In Cao’s defense, his district is in a highly liberal area in New Orleans, and his constituents probably wanted the bill to pass. Thirty-Nine Democrats (~15%) voted against the bill despite Obama trying to lobby weary Democrats to vote in favor of the bill.
Nancy Pelosi, grinning ear to ear, compared the passing of this bill to the landmark passing of Social Security in 1935 and Medicare in 1965. First, let’s not forget that Social Security and Medicare are on the verge of going bankrupt in the next decade. Congress grossly underestimated the costs of these programs and they have most likely done the same on this version of ObamaCare. Secondly, Social Security passed in the House by a 372 to 33 margin and in the Senate by a 77 to 6 margin. Medicare passed the House by a 307 to 116 margin and in the Senate by a 70 to 24 margin. Thus, Medicare and Social Security passed both houses of congress by large margins because the vote was bipartisan. Nancy Pelosi certainly needs a history lesson to think this bill is in the same category as Medicare and Social Security. Pelosi is only trying to inflate the significance of this bill to be her defining moment in history.
This partisan ObamaCare bill will more than likely be killed in the Senate since many moderate Independents and Democrats do not like the public option (to pass it they will need 60 votes in the Senate). The only way this bill passes the Senate is if the Democrats use the nuclear or reconciliation option, meaning only 51 votes will be needed. However, if the Democrats use this strategy, it would be political suicide.
This bill is arguably the worst bill to ever pass the House of Representatives. The bill is 2000 pages long and it will cost 1.2 trillion dollars over the next decade, which is most likely grossly underestimated. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicts the bill will cost more like 3 trillion over a decade. The bill will be paid for by cutting over 400 billion in Medicare over the next decade as well as taxing individuals that make over 500 thousand dollars at 5.4%. If the Medicare cuts eliminate waste and bureaucracy it would make sense, but the cuts will most likely come at the expense of treating seniors and rationing care. The 5.4% tax increase on the wealthy will hurt the economy because they will have less money to pump into the economy. Besides, many of the targeted wealthy are small business owners and therefore, the tax increase could cost people jobs. The bill also places a tax of 2.5% on all medical devices such as pace makers. These costs will obviously be passed onto the consumers that need these products to survive. This simply makes little sense and certainly does not make healthcare more affordable.
The bill still falls short of covering all Americans, leaving 4% of all Americans uninsured even though the legislation will offer a federally run public option. The bill also creates more than one hundred new offices, committees, and bureaucracies to run the program. This truly shows that this bill will be wasteful and inefficient. Most Americans and corporations will be mandated to have or provide insurance or pay an expensive fine and receive a possible prison sentence. It will penalize states that try to limit punitive damages on lawsuits, which will enable malpractice insurance rates to continue to soar out of control. We can only hope a bill this convoluted, partisan, complex, inefficient, wasteful, costly, and economically challenged will not be passed by the Senate into law.
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