Fix Health Care Policy

The Vapor Bill – Congress’ Secret Plan to Pass Obamacare – Update

President Barack Obama’s push for a sweeping health care overhaul edged closer to a major victory in the Senate Finance Committee. Early this week, the Senate Finance Committee will vote on final passage on the “Vapor Bill” being debated and marked up in Committee. The term “Vapor Bill” is used to describe the legislation, because the Senate Finance Committee has been debating the outline of a bill and not actual bill text in Committee. Senator Jim Bunning (R-KY) offered an amendment to allow a reading of the bill for 72 hours before final passage, so that members could read the bill they were voting upon, yet liberals in the committee blocked this amendment. We have mapped out one scenario for Senate consideration before, but we now have more details on the secret plan to pass Obamacare.

The Senate floor debate on health legislation could start as early as next week, but more likely they will consider Obamacare starting on October 13th. The Senate Finance Committee has been held up and will not have a final vote on the Committee bill until next Tuesday, therefore the Senate will have to wait another week before the debate starts.

Here is what we know. Sources on K Street and on Capitol Hill have confirmed the following scenario: (more…)

Tags: Congressional Budget Office, Jim Bunning, Obama Health Care Plan, Senate Finance Committee

House Speaker Pelosi Commits to 72-Hour Wait Period for Health Vote

The Hill reports today that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has agreed to a 72-hour waiting period between posting a health care bill online and a final vote on the bill, conceding to Republican demands for three-day period to read a final bill.

House GOP members had introduced a petition requiring the wait time for lawmakers to read all bills, which some centrist Democrats had signed, the Hill reports. The article quotes a spokesman for House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) who doubted the promise. “House Democrats actually voted to post the trillion-dollar ‘simulus’ bill online for 48 hours before a vote and then broke that promise, so this should be taken with a large grain of salt,” said Michael Steel.

The Senate Finance Committee, which is in the midst of marking up Sen. Max Baucus’ “Chairman’s Mark” of his health care bill, defeated a similar amendment yesterday. 

To ensure that the Senate would actually know what they were voting on, Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) offered an amendment that would have required that actual legislative text, as well as a final Congressional Budget Office estimate of the cost of the bill, be posted for 72 hours on the Senate Finance Committee Web site for public review before the Senate Finance Committee could vote on its final passage.

The Bunning amendment was defeated on a largely party-line vote, with all Senate Democrats – except Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) – voting against it.

Tags: 72-hour wait period, Chairman's Mark, read the bill, Senate Finance Committee

CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf

“A formal cost estimate would require — we have said this to people on the House and Senate side — would really require two weeks of work by us, once a package is settled. And that may seem like a long time, but it — there are a lot of complications in doing this right, as you need it to be done and it is the interaction effects among the provisions, it is the reading and the legislative language,” — (September 22, 2009 at Senate Finance Committee hearing)

Tags: formal cost estimate, Senate Finance Committee

Sen. Max Baucus (D-Montana)

“We’re doing this all on the fly, so it’s a little bit, makes me a little bit nervous.” — (September 23, 2009 at Senate Finance Committee hearing)

Tags: baucus, health care reform, Senate Finance Committee

Don’t Let Co-ops Become a Trojan Horse

According to today’s Washington Post, the Senate Finance Committee will soon produce a health care plan that rejects “a government-run health insurance plan in favor of a network of member-owned cooperatives.” More commonly referred to as “co-ops”, these organizations actually already have a long and proud tradition in many sectors of the U.S. economy, including health care. But Americans must be wary that our nation’s co-op tradition does not become a vehicle for government-run health care.

To some, the word “co-operative” may have a slight Bolshevik whiff to it, but actually a private co-op is nothing more than private individuals exercising their right to voluntarily self-associate. From farm bureaus to barn-raisers, private co-ops are part of American society. In the realm of health care, a group that organizes coverage provided by private insurers could be structured as a co-op. Or the health insurer itself could be a co-operative owned by its member policyholders. Those kind of insurance companies are called mutual insurers.

Understood in this manner, co-ops have far more to do with Edmund Burke and little platoons than with Leon Trotsky and manning the barricades. And they can be part of the health care solution.

But, don’t be fooled; Burkean little platoons are not what the Obama Administration and its allies in Congress have in mind. In liberal Washington today, leaders such as Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), are talking up co-ops that would be: (more…)

Tags: Co-Op, Senate Finance Committee