{"id":445477,"date":"2010-03-19T00:31:26","date_gmt":"2010-03-19T04:31:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.szone.us\/f95\/health-care-fight-true-march-madness-41082\/"},"modified":"2010-03-19T00:31:26","modified_gmt":"2010-03-19T04:31:26","slug":"health-care-fight-is-the-true-march-madness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/445477","title":{"rendered":"Health Care Fight Is The True March Madness"},"content":{"rendered":"
On 03.18.10 01:38 PM posted by Ernest Istook<\/p>\n

\n<ahref="http:\/\/blog.heritage.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/march-madness.jpg">\"\"<\/p>The public doesn\u0092t trust Washington politicians\u0097and those politicians don\u0092t trust each other. Those two truths could doom President Obama\u0092s health care bill even if it weren\u0092t an unaffordable behemoth.<\/p>\n

The final health debate merges multiple story lines into one, just as March Madness does for an assortment of college basketball teams. Some of these themes are:<\/p>\n

–The Ugliness of Today\u0092s Washington. Trust in elected leaders is collapsing into a hole deeper than Alice ever fell into. It deepens with every disclosure of the process. \u0093Deeming\u0094 a bill to pass; avoiding votes to avoid accountability; buying votes with taxpayers\u0092 money, etc. \u0093Louisiana Purchase\u0094 and \u0093Cornhusker Kickback\u0094 are only visible symptoms of a wayward system that long ago went amok.<\/p>\n

<spanid="more-29243"><\/span>–House vs. Senate Mistrust. Even if the House passed it this weekend, that bill must go back through the Senate. Knowing it could be blocked or changed in that chamber, House members are reluctant to take political risks with no reward. Thanks to the reconciliation process is being used, GOP Senators think they can win parliamentary rulings that automatically strike out <ahref="http:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/stories\/0310\/34605.html">multiple parts of the bill. The Senate Budget Chairman predicts the bill definitely would be <ahref="http:\/\/www.rollcall.com\/news\/44356-1.html">changed in the Senate. That would mean a return trip to the House and a repeat of this soap opera\u0097again diverting attention from more pressing issues like fixing the economy.<\/p>\n

–Making Health Care Cost More for Individuals. President Obama and Sen. Lamar Alexander (R, TN) publicly sparred over whether the bill would make individual coverage cost less or more than it does already. Eventually, Obama was forced to admit\u0097live on C-SPAN last month\u0097that many Americans indeed would <ahref="http:\/\/dailycaller.com\/2010\/02\/25\/obama-smacks-down-alexander-thats-not-factually-accurate-video\/#ixzz0iYSflRlc">pay 10% to 13% more. This week, an Associated Press fact check article found no truth in Obama\u0092s oft-repeated claim that his proposal will make individuals\u0092 <ahref="http:\/\/www.google.com\/hostednews\/ap\/article\/ALeqM5iVn9wrhB-3SF-Svo9kZyXd4bHRLAD9EGJJNG0">health insurance more affordable.<\/p>\n

–Making Health Care Cost More for Government. The trillion-dollar cost of the bill (over ten years) makes people wonder how spending more would supposedly reduce the deficit. The simple answer is that it creates and raises taxes by more than a trillion dollars, such as new taxes on health insurance and medical devices. As The Heritage Foundation concludes, there are <ahref="http:\/\/blog.heritage.org\/2010\/03\/18\/six-ways-the-senate-health-care-bill-raises-health-care-costs-kills-jobs-and-weakens-the-economy\/">\u0093Six Ways the Senate Health Care Bill Raises Health Care Costs, Kills Jobs, and Weakens the Economy.\u0094 The Congressional Budget Office admits its fiscal evaluation is \u0093preliminary,\u0094 and others <ahref="http:\/\/blogs.investors.com\/capitalhill\/index.php\/home\/35-politicsinvesting\/1524-five-reasons-the-cbo-figures-are-phony">call the numbers \u0093phony.\u0094<\/p>\n

–Creating Doomsday. The chair of Blue Dog Democrats, Rep. Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin (D, SD), predicts the use of \u0093deeming\u0094 via the Slaughter Rule, \u0093would poison an already terribly partisan atmosphere and leave the Congress even less able to find bipartisan solutions to fiscal problems that are <ahref="http:\/\/thehill.com\/blogs\/blog-briefing-room\/news\/87677-top-blue-dog-slaughter-solution-is-poison">on the verge of becoming overwhelming.\u0094 Once more, we learn that no situation is so bad that government cannot make it worse.<\/p>\n

–Ignoring the Real Problems. As Rep. Jason Altmire (D, PA) told ABC News, “The long-term cost projections are simply unsustainable.” He correctly noted that cost containment is missing. Even if 15% of Americans lack insurance and want it given to them at taxpayer expense, the other 85% who have health insurance want lower premiums. Offering them a government subsidy doesn\u0092t reduce the costs\u0097that money has to be taken from taxpayers before a part would be given back as a subsidy. Yet that is what Obama calls \u0093savings\u0094 for consumers. Sleight-of-hand is too kind a term for that process.<\/p>\n

–The \u0093All About Me\u0094 Approach. Sadly, the White House is pitching the notion that aye votes are needed to save the Obama presidency rather than help the country. As Rep. Jose Serrano (D, NY) described after Obama met with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, \u0093He was subtle, but that was the underlying theme of the meeting \u0097 the importance of passing this for the health of the presidency.\u0094 If that means some Democrats in Congress are thrown under the bus and defeated at the polls, it\u0092s an acceptable price to their leaders.<\/p>\n

So when Obama calls for Congress to show \u0093courage\u0094 by voting on the bill it\u0092s easy for him to say. It\u0092s others who will pay the price\u0097both members of his party and the beleaguered taxpayers of the United States of America.<\/p>\n

In basketball, March Madness will end on April 5th. But in politics, the madness promises to continue at least until November.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/blog.heritage.org\/2010\/03\/18\/…march-madness\/<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On 03.18.10 01:38 PM posted by Ernest Istook <ahref="http:\/\/blog.heritage.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/march-madness.jpg"><\/p>The public doesn\u0092t trust Washington politicians\u0097and those politicians don\u0092t trust each other. Those two truths could doom President Obama\u0092s health care bill even if it weren\u0092t an unaffordable behemoth. The final health debate merges multiple story lines into one, just as March Madness does for an assortment […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-445477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=445477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445477\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=445477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=445477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=445477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}