October 3, 2009
One of the problems in figuring out how to feel about the various proposals to reform the United States’ health care system is that it’s just really complex. After all, we’re talking about 17% of the nation’s economy, which makes our health care industry larger than the GDP of many of the world’s nations. The implications of whatever is finally done will be far-reaching and difficult to reverse.
However, this week we got a dramatic clue to how we should feel about the proposals the Democrats are pushing through Congress and President Obama is cheerleading.
Kentucky Senator Jim Bunning entered an amendment to the Senate version of Health Care Reform. The proposal was really simple: After the bill is finalized, the American people would have 72 hours to review the wording of the bill before the Senate would have its final vote. The amendment also stipulated that the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office would be allowed to run the numbers before a final vote.
Sounds reasonable enough, except that 72 hours is really not enough to have a real discussion of the bill in its final form, whatever that might be.
So of course the Democrats defeated the amendment, because they know the bill will be more likely to pass if no one, including the Senators themselves, knows what’s in the bill before they vote for it.
But this also tells us something very important about the Democrat majority in Congress: They don’t want us to know what they are really doing.
And that’s really all you need to know about the current Health Care Reform proposal to have an informed opinion.
