FixHealthCarePolicy

Video of the Week: “We have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it”

You might have seen this week a stunning demonstration of political condescension on the health care front. In remarks at the 2010 Legislative Conference for the National Association of Counties, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, “But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of controversy.”

This revealing comment reinforces a patriarchal (or in Pelosi’s case matriarchal) attitude Congress has taken with the American public: What lurks within the House and Senate health care bills will be revealed in the fullness of time, and it’s really good for us if we only knew better. (more…)

Tags: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Individual Mandate, ObamaCare, reconciliation, Senate Health Bill, taxes, taxpayer-funded abortions

Obamacare’s Procedural Fraud on the American People

The Health Care Nuclear Option is still the stated plan to get Obamacare to the President’s desk. The latest wrinkle is designed to allow pro-life Democrats to vote for the Senate’s taxpayer funded abortion language while still claiming they never voted for taxpayer funded abortions. Don’t be fooled.

First, let’s be clear that the Senate bill allows tax dollars to be used for abortions. According to Chuck Donovan of The Heritage Foundation, the Senate passed Obamacare bill funds abortion in several ways, even creating an appropriation for Community Health Centers that contains no restriction on abortion subsidies. If the Senate version of Obamacare is passed by the House and sent to the President, then the House has consented to the federal funding of abortion. (more…)

Tags: community health centers, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, nuclear option, ObamaCare, reconciliation, taxpayer-funded abortions

What the House Would Have to Swallow in the Senate Bill

Amidst all the intense speculation about quickly passing the President’s health care agenda through the Budget Reconciliation process before the Easter Recess, ordinary Americans should remember one thing: the House of Representatives must first pass the 2,700-page, $2.5 trillion, Senate health bill. So, the next big step in the national health care debate is floor action in the House of Representatives, where House Speaker Nancy Pelosi must round up at least 216 votes.

Heritage analysts have conducted some extensive research and analysis of the provisions of the giant Senate bill. If the House passes the Senate bill and it goes to the President’s desk for signature, it then would become the law of the land. For all intents and purposes, the legislative debate would then be over.

Regardless of Administration or Senate leadership promises to “fix” the new law (the Senate bill) through the Budget Reconciliation process, there are no guarantees. Any “fixes”– if they did come about — would have to survive another round of Senate floor action. So it is worth recalling what the Senate bill would mean for Americans were it to become law. (more…)

Tags: Cornhusker Kickback, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Individual Mandate, Office of Personnel Management, President's proposal, public option, Senate Health Bill

Morning Bell: Obamacare’s Kabuki End Game

The doctors in lab coats surrounding President Barack Obama as he gave his latest health care speech yesterday were not there to give the President a physical; that happened Sunday. No, these doctors were props, dressed to impress for what the White House claims is their “final push” for the President’s government take-over of the health care industry. The President again repeated the same old tired claims he has been making for months: “The proposal I’ve put forward gives Americans more control over their health care,” “our proposal is paid for,” and “my proposal would bring down the cost of health care for millions.” We, and plenty of others, have refuted all these claims before, but this time they are particularly easy to expose as patently false. President Obama gave away the game when he said:

“Our cost-cutting measures mirror most of the proposals in the current Senate bill, which reduces most people’s premiums and brings down our deficit by up to $1 trillion over the next two decades. And those aren’t my numbers – they are the savings determined by the CBO, which is the Washington acronym for the nonpartisan, independent referee of Congress.”

But there is one huge difference between the Senate bill and what the President kept referring to as my/our proposal: the Senate bill actually exists. For all the talk in Washington about Democrats in the Senate using reconciliation to pass a final version of Obamacare, one key fact has been overlooked: no reconciliation bill exists. Not in the House. Not in the Senate. Nowhere. It simply has not yet been written, and there are plenty of reasons to believe it never will. (more…)

Tags: CBO, final push, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, ObamaCare, President Barack Obama, reconciliation, White House speech

Not Only Do They Not Have the Votes…

…they don’t even have a plan on how to get them! Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) insisted this weekend that she “will be able to get the votes needed to pass sweeping health care legislation in the House.” What this really means is that she does not have those votes right now. And if you were watching the television yesterday it quickly became apparent that the leadership in the House has no idea how they are going to get them. First Speaker Pelosi on This Week:

VARGAS: If — but the point is when it does finally come to vote on it in the House, you’re certain that you can muster the 217 votes that you need…even with the differences over abortion language? Things…
PELOSI: Yes.
VARGAS:… that there are members of the House who voted in favor of it before, who are now saying, “We can’t vote for this bill, because of the Senate language on abortion?
PELOSI: Well let me say I have this in three — just so you know how we sequence this. First we zero in on what the policy will be. And that is what we’ll be doing — following the president’s summit yesterday.
Secondly, we’ll see what the Senate can do. What is the substance? And what is the Senate prepared to do? And then we’ll go to the third step as to what my — my members will vote for.

Meanwhile, Pelosi’s second-in-command, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) was singing a different tune on Face the Nation: (more…)

Tags: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, ObamaCare, reconciliation

Video: Obamacare is Entitlement Expansion, not Entitlement Reform

One of the best kept dirty little secrets of Obamacare is that over half of the health insurance expansion obtained by Americans through the bill is accomplished by putting them on the welfare program Medicaid. Rep. Pete Roskam (R-IL) not only made this point yesterday, but also highlighted a great quote from Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D-MT) on why Medicaid is “one of least effective programs in terms of health care in the history of the country.” From the Blair House health summit transcript:

“And I think one of the problems, to get to this coverage issue, is that the premise of this bill is that coverage is expanded through Medicaid, welfare. Speaker Pelosi a couple of minutes ago — or a couple of hours ago, actually said that health care reform is entitlement reform.”

SPEAKER PELOSI: “Yes.”

REPRESENTATIVE ROSKAM: “Yes. I would put a brighter light on that and say it’s entitlement expansion. Think about what we’re doing. The CBO when they wrote to Harry Reid — wrote to Senator Reid a couple of months ago, they said, look, there’s about 15 million people that are going to be put on Medicaid. And Medicaid is a house of cards. Medicaid is not something that is serving the public very well.” (more…)

Tags: Blair House, Health Care Summit, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Medicaid, ObamaCare, Rep. Pete Roskam, start over, welfare reform

What Now on ObamaCare?

The White House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) have been in secret negotiations on ObamaCare for a few weeks now, yet the election yesterday in Massachusetts of Senator-elect Scott Brown has sent a thunderbolt from Boston to Washington that may push ObamaCare into the critical list.

Senator Obama carried Massachusetts with 62% to 36% on his march to 365 electoral votes and an electoral mandate in 2008. Yesterday, that same state broke 52% to 47% for Republican State Senator Brown over Democrat Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley. This election was, in part, a referendum on the President’s health care reform proposal, and it did not win that referendum.

The fact that this state has not had a Republican elected to the Senate since Senator Ed Brooke in 1972 and that seat has not been held by a Republican since Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. in 1952 is evidence that, even in a left leaning state like Massachusetts, the American people are angry and dissatisfied with Washington’s direction on health care reform. An NBC/Wall Street Journal Poll released has only 33% agreeing with the statement that “Obama’s health care plan” is a good idea and 46% opposed. Rasmussen conducted polls in Massachusetts that indicated that a key to the Brown victory is that 41% strongly oppose ObamaCare and a mere 25% strongly favor it. Even the people in left leaning Massachusetts dislike ObamaCare and they voted for a candidate who pledged to filibuster the bill if it comes back to the Senate

(more…)

Tags: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, ObamaCare, Scott Brown, secret negotiations, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid

Morning Bell: Speaker Pelosi’s Job-Killing Agenda

After a three-week holiday break, the House of Representatives returned to session yesterday, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) marked the occasion with an op-ed detailing her “record of achievement” and outlining her agenda for the rest of the 111th Congress. Pelosi writes: “At the halfway mark in this Congress, our priorities are clear: strengthening the security of the American people and building a new economy that offers our families lasting prosperity.” But the 111th Congress is not the first Congress Speaker Pelosi has presided over. When Pelosi was first handed the gavel in January 2007, the U.S. economy employed 137.3 million people and our nation’s unemployment rate stood at 4.6%. According to the Labor Department’s most recent report, the U.S. economy has shed 6.3 million jobs since then, and 10% of our workforce is now unemployed.

Speaker Pelosi goes on to claim that President Barack Obama’s failed stimulus has “created or saved” 1.6 million jobs so far, but even the White House has abandoned its controversial “saved or created” jobs accounting scheme after more than 90,000 of the 640,000 jobs it claimed to create were found to be completely fraudulent. Pelosi then touts the Cash for Clunkers program as another success despite the fact the program did nothing to create auto sector jobs, led to a crash in auto sales, and did nothing to help the environment. Pelosi also celebrated the expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which only further bankrupts our states and inched us ever closer to government-run health care. (more…)

Tags: CHIP, government-run health care, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Medicaid, ObamaCare, small businesses

Let’s Make a Deal: Doctor Support for Government Contracts

So why don’t President Barack Obama and Speaker Nancy Pelosi want to allow CSPAN to televise the final health care negotiations? Why is White House press secretary Robert Gibbs evading questions about transparency in the final crafting of the bill? Just what deals are being made to secure the votes necessary to pass a plan that vast majorities of the American public are against?

It appears that medical groups supporting Obamacare could come away with healthy bottom lines. Dr. Erik Dahl blasted the American Medical Association’s recent support of the Senate health care bill, noting that the physicians group failed to mention the medical billing system it has with the Health and Human Services Department.

Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Dahl, a Maryland doctor and a former assistant chief at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, posits in a letter to the editor: (more…)

Tags: AMA, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Mayo Clinic, President Barack Obama

Let’s Make a Deal: Immigration Reform

So why don’t President Barack Obama and Speaker Nancy Pelosi want to allow CSPAN to televise the final health care negotiations? What deals are being made to secure the votes necessary to pass a plan that vast majorities of the American public are against?

TPM reports that Democratic lawmakers who were upset that illegal immigrants would not be allowed to participate in the new health care system may vote for final passage of a merged bill, “so long as the White House offers a substantive promise to start pushing comprehensive immigration legislation this year.”

“Those familiar with the talks say any immigration legislation will include various amnesty provisions to allow for health care coverage,” TPM notes. (more…)

Tags: amnesty, backroom deals, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, immigration reform, Medicaid, President Barack Obama