The debate is over and the healthcare bill has passed the House by a vote of 219 to 212. Pro-life turncoat Bart Stupak announced late Sunday that he had reached an agreement with the President that an Executive Order would be issued upon passage of the Bill that would uphold the Hyde Amendment prohibiting the use of Federal funds for abortion. Stupak is either a fool or he was merely holding out for his share of the free-flowing money the House leadership used to purchase the votes of so many of his colleagues. Truthfully, I think his support was needed to provide a margin of comfort so Nancy Pelosi and the President leaned hard enough to make him fold like a cheap suitcase. I’m sure he waited too long to get one of the sweetheart deals his other friends received so in the end, all Mr. Stupak will get is an Executive Order from the President so that he can claim he stood fast on his principals.
First of all, considering the track record this President has at keeping his word, I doubt the Executive Order that Stupak will receive contains little more than a confirmation of the language that is already in the bill; language that is woefully inadequate to accomplish what Stupak claimed was essential to gain his vote. Why am I so cynical? The President has far more pro-choice Democrats to placate than the block of so-called pro-life Democrats that Bart Stupak had spoken for. The bill contains language that would allow someone purchasing insurance through the exchange to write a separate check for abortion coverage in order to claim that no Federal funds were used. Asking people to write a separate check for abortion coverage when purchasing insurance through the exchange means very little when the policy itself is subsidized with Federal money. This is a neat little accounting trick that amounts to little more than shifting money from one pocket to the other.
An iron clad guarantee would be the elimination of abortion coverage in the insurance available through the exchange, allowing insurers to offer a separate rider that people could purchase individually and totally outside of the exchange if they so desired. But that really isn’t the issue; now is it. The Hyde amendment already allows the use of Federal funds for abortion in the case of rape or incest but that does not go far enough for Progressive Democrats. Abortion may be a medical procedure but is it healthcare? For abortion to be considered healthcare one would have to place unwanted pregnancy in the same league with disease or illness instead of calling what it is….the natural and expected result of unprotected sex. One would think that abortion wouldn’t be an issue after the advent of AIDS or the less catastrophic but equally chronic plethora of sexually transmitted diseases but apparently, even the threat of disease cannot quell the fever of human desire.
I find it interesting that the pro-choice advocates that have, for years, rallied around the battle cry of “Leave my body alone” are now signing up in droves to support a bill that will give the government an incredible amount of control over those same bodies. Pelosi already said that this more about diet than diabetes indicating that our pro-choice friends may have retained control over their wombs but through this bill, have surrendered freedom of choice in nearly everything else that makes them human.
Progressives operate under the firm belief that there needs to be controlling power at the Federal level because the general population is incapable of making rational and informed decisions for themselves. The exchange was not a compromise to cure a healthcare crisis; it is phase one in the creation of a single payer national healthcare system that will make all of your healthcare choices for you; eventually using monetary penalties to force behavioral changes to reduce government healthcare costs. Even that will not be enough and as the deficit and debt increase because of this malignant entitlement program, the actual rationing of care is as inevitable as the collapse of the private insurance system that is already written into the bill.
The provisions in this bill that mandate changes to the level of coverage that must be offered by approved plans coupled with the proposed caps on premium increases can only have one consequence. Those provisions are intentionally designed to drive private insurance out of business because there is no way they can compete with the subsidized plans offered through the exchange. As the availability of private insurance becomes scarce, the Federal government will “have to” come up with a public option to shore up the exchange with full knowledge that the destruction of private insurance is imminent. When the last private insurer is driven into extinction that is when the public option will morph, out of necessity, into the single payer system Progressives wanted from the start.
No? Well, an employer that currently pays more than $10,000 per year per employee for private healthcare insurance will find some curious things. If even one of his employees seeks a “better deal” through the exchange, the employer will be fined approximately $2,000 for EACH of his employees. If he provides no insurance at all he will pay a fine of $3,000 per employee and be assessed an additional payroll tax for healthcare. As it turns out, the penalties for not providing healthcare insurance are less than the insurance itself. Maybe that’s the $3,000 reduction in employer costs the President said your boss would see if this bill passes? Almost, but then there is the loss of the Bush tax cuts in 2011.
The Executive Order that Stupak will attempt to use to placate his constituents is not a law so it can be rescinded by a future President with the stroke of a pen and I predict we won’t have to wait that long. If this bill becomes law, Obama will need those pro-choice Democrats to continue his agenda and I fully expect that Stupak’s “piece of paper” is one of the bargaining chips that will be auctioned off to obtain future votes for card check, cap and trade or immigration reform.
The American people have been riveted on the healthcare debate and are solidly opposed to this monstrosity. They are watching the debates and saw Bart Stupak not only as one member of Congress that actually stood for principal but as their last hope to defeat this bill. Defeat would have allowed us do something for healthcare that didn’t involve expanding the power of government to that of the level of a totalitarian dictatorship but that hope was stolen from the American people by Stupak today. The Executive Order that Stupak will wave at his constituents to gain their forgiveness for voting for this bill will not shield him from the fallout (or the rotten tomatoes). Let’s face it….if he had said he was opposed to the bill over money or the expansion of government and changed his mind later, he might have been forgiven. Since he made himself the poster boy for Congressional principals, the surrender of his convictions will be used by those that run against him as a clear display of his lack of character and pro-life organizations began that assault the moment the vote was concluded.
The healthcare debate is far from over and even though the Senate has promised to use reconciliation to pass the bill, there are points of order that will be raised by the Republicans for every component of the reconciliation package that is not a budget issue. After all, reconciliation is a budget procedure and anything that is not related to budget, will most likely be stripped from the reconciliation package if the Senate Parliamentarian agrees that it violates the rules of reconciliation. If anything in the reconciliation package is changed, it will have to go back to the house for a new vote; a vote that will take place after these poor Democrats have gone home for the Easter break, faced their constituents and tried to explain what they have already done. I seriously doubt Mr. Stupak’s piece of paper will make a damned bit of difference to any of them.
The Democrats have ignored the American people and that has enraged more of us than a sequestered Congress could possibly imagine. Pelosi and Reid forced this through on strict timelines to avoid the same harassing town halls Congressional members were subject to last summer. The leadership tried to convince their members that the opposition to the bill reflected by the polls is that people want more, not less and that since this bill will eventually achieve that, they will be vindicated. Well, the leadership has misread the people and this vote will go down in history as a political suicide pact. Too bad Nancy Pelosi represents a district that is even further to the left than Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez or she would be packing her office this November too. The only solace I have is that it is virtually guaranteed that by the time January of 2011 rolls around, she will no longer be Speaker of the House.
Paul
First of all, considering the track record this President has at keeping his word, I doubt the Executive Order that Stupak will receive contains little more than a confirmation of the language that is already in the bill; language that is woefully inadequate to accomplish what Stupak claimed was essential to gain his vote. Why am I so cynical? The President has far more pro-choice Democrats to placate than the block of so-called pro-life Democrats that Bart Stupak had spoken for. The bill contains language that would allow someone purchasing insurance through the exchange to write a separate check for abortion coverage in order to claim that no Federal funds were used. Asking people to write a separate check for abortion coverage when purchasing insurance through the exchange means very little when the policy itself is subsidized with Federal money. This is a neat little accounting trick that amounts to little more than shifting money from one pocket to the other.
An iron clad guarantee would be the elimination of abortion coverage in the insurance available through the exchange, allowing insurers to offer a separate rider that people could purchase individually and totally outside of the exchange if they so desired. But that really isn’t the issue; now is it. The Hyde amendment already allows the use of Federal funds for abortion in the case of rape or incest but that does not go far enough for Progressive Democrats. Abortion may be a medical procedure but is it healthcare? For abortion to be considered healthcare one would have to place unwanted pregnancy in the same league with disease or illness instead of calling what it is….the natural and expected result of unprotected sex. One would think that abortion wouldn’t be an issue after the advent of AIDS or the less catastrophic but equally chronic plethora of sexually transmitted diseases but apparently, even the threat of disease cannot quell the fever of human desire.
I find it interesting that the pro-choice advocates that have, for years, rallied around the battle cry of “Leave my body alone” are now signing up in droves to support a bill that will give the government an incredible amount of control over those same bodies. Pelosi already said that this more about diet than diabetes indicating that our pro-choice friends may have retained control over their wombs but through this bill, have surrendered freedom of choice in nearly everything else that makes them human.
Progressives operate under the firm belief that there needs to be controlling power at the Federal level because the general population is incapable of making rational and informed decisions for themselves. The exchange was not a compromise to cure a healthcare crisis; it is phase one in the creation of a single payer national healthcare system that will make all of your healthcare choices for you; eventually using monetary penalties to force behavioral changes to reduce government healthcare costs. Even that will not be enough and as the deficit and debt increase because of this malignant entitlement program, the actual rationing of care is as inevitable as the collapse of the private insurance system that is already written into the bill.
The provisions in this bill that mandate changes to the level of coverage that must be offered by approved plans coupled with the proposed caps on premium increases can only have one consequence. Those provisions are intentionally designed to drive private insurance out of business because there is no way they can compete with the subsidized plans offered through the exchange. As the availability of private insurance becomes scarce, the Federal government will “have to” come up with a public option to shore up the exchange with full knowledge that the destruction of private insurance is imminent. When the last private insurer is driven into extinction that is when the public option will morph, out of necessity, into the single payer system Progressives wanted from the start.
No? Well, an employer that currently pays more than $10,000 per year per employee for private healthcare insurance will find some curious things. If even one of his employees seeks a “better deal” through the exchange, the employer will be fined approximately $2,000 for EACH of his employees. If he provides no insurance at all he will pay a fine of $3,000 per employee and be assessed an additional payroll tax for healthcare. As it turns out, the penalties for not providing healthcare insurance are less than the insurance itself. Maybe that’s the $3,000 reduction in employer costs the President said your boss would see if this bill passes? Almost, but then there is the loss of the Bush tax cuts in 2011.
The Executive Order that Stupak will attempt to use to placate his constituents is not a law so it can be rescinded by a future President with the stroke of a pen and I predict we won’t have to wait that long. If this bill becomes law, Obama will need those pro-choice Democrats to continue his agenda and I fully expect that Stupak’s “piece of paper” is one of the bargaining chips that will be auctioned off to obtain future votes for card check, cap and trade or immigration reform.
The American people have been riveted on the healthcare debate and are solidly opposed to this monstrosity. They are watching the debates and saw Bart Stupak not only as one member of Congress that actually stood for principal but as their last hope to defeat this bill. Defeat would have allowed us do something for healthcare that didn’t involve expanding the power of government to that of the level of a totalitarian dictatorship but that hope was stolen from the American people by Stupak today. The Executive Order that Stupak will wave at his constituents to gain their forgiveness for voting for this bill will not shield him from the fallout (or the rotten tomatoes). Let’s face it….if he had said he was opposed to the bill over money or the expansion of government and changed his mind later, he might have been forgiven. Since he made himself the poster boy for Congressional principals, the surrender of his convictions will be used by those that run against him as a clear display of his lack of character and pro-life organizations began that assault the moment the vote was concluded.
The healthcare debate is far from over and even though the Senate has promised to use reconciliation to pass the bill, there are points of order that will be raised by the Republicans for every component of the reconciliation package that is not a budget issue. After all, reconciliation is a budget procedure and anything that is not related to budget, will most likely be stripped from the reconciliation package if the Senate Parliamentarian agrees that it violates the rules of reconciliation. If anything in the reconciliation package is changed, it will have to go back to the house for a new vote; a vote that will take place after these poor Democrats have gone home for the Easter break, faced their constituents and tried to explain what they have already done. I seriously doubt Mr. Stupak’s piece of paper will make a damned bit of difference to any of them.
The Democrats have ignored the American people and that has enraged more of us than a sequestered Congress could possibly imagine. Pelosi and Reid forced this through on strict timelines to avoid the same harassing town halls Congressional members were subject to last summer. The leadership tried to convince their members that the opposition to the bill reflected by the polls is that people want more, not less and that since this bill will eventually achieve that, they will be vindicated. Well, the leadership has misread the people and this vote will go down in history as a political suicide pact. Too bad Nancy Pelosi represents a district that is even further to the left than Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez or she would be packing her office this November too. The only solace I have is that it is virtually guaranteed that by the time January of 2011 rolls around, she will no longer be Speaker of the House.
Paul
Very interesting breakdown of the abortion issue. I think it's telling that the only news we are getting about Stupak's vote from the mainstream media is the "Baby Killer" comment yelled during his speech.
ReplyDeleteI honestly hope that this vote will go down in history as the day the Democrats shot themselves in the foot... I'm sure if the November elections were held tomorrow, we would see a sweeping change. I just hope that we can maintain the momentum...
I fear you are right, this vote will go down in history right along with the sinking of the Lucitania, the loss of the Shuttle Challenger and Hurricane Katrina. Disasters are historic too.
ReplyDelete