Congress reconvenes. The Senate will resume consideration of H.R. 3082, the $133.9 billion fiscal year 2010 Military Construction-Veterans Affairs (Milcon-VA) appropriations bill. The Senate will vote on an amendment from Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) concerning transparency and a motion to recommit the bill to committee offered by Sen. Coburn. More votes on amendments are scheduled for Tuesday. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid filed cloture on the nomination of David Hamilton to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals; vote is expected on Tuesday afternoon.Over the weekend a key report on Democrats’ House-passed health care reform bill was released from the actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the agency that oversees those programs. Issued after a request from House Republicans, the report found that overall health care spending would be likely to rise under the House bill and the $500 billion in Medicare cuts “would sharply reduce benefits for some senior citizens and could jeopardize access to care for millions of others,” according to The Washington Post.
Over the last several months, Democrats have taken pains to assure Americans that their massive health care reform bills will “bend the cost curve” and reduce health care spending in the U.S. But the AP reports, “Overall spending on health care would rise as a result of legislation approved a week ago by the House, and billions of dollars in projected savings contained in the measure will be difficult to maintain, according to a report by a top official at the agency that oversees Medicare.” Politico notes, “Democrats have promised that health reform would reduce health care costs, but legislation the House passed last week would increase costs over the next decade by $289 billion.” Further, according to Politico, “In other words, outside of Medicare payment cuts to hospitals, the bill doesn’t curb increasing health care costs. And even the Medicare payment cuts will be difficult to sustain. The analysis is more bad news for Democrats, who are facing increasing criticism that their reforms don’t do enough to control costs.”
And on the Medicare front, Vice President Joe Biden has said, “Nobody is going to mess with your benefits. Nobody.” And President Obama has assured, “We’re not going to mess with Medicare.” Yet The Washington Post points out that the CMS report “found that Medicare cuts contained in the health package approved by the House on Nov. 7 are likely to prove so costly to hospitals and nursing homes that they could stop taking Medicare altogether.”
Given the realities of the Democrats’ bills it’s little wonder that Americans continue to oppose their approach to health care reform. Indeed, “Americans are worried about the fine print in the health care overhaul, an Associated Press poll says, and those concerns are creating new challenges for President Barack Obama as he tries to overcome doubts in Congress. . . . When poll questions were framed broadly, the answers seemed to indicate ample support for Obama's goals. When required trade-offs were brought into the equation, opinions shifted — sometimes dramatically.” In particular, the AP poll found that 64% oppose requiring all Americans to have health insurance if there’s a federal penalty for not doing so. Overall, “[t]he poll found that 43 percent of Americans oppose the health care plans being discussed in Congress, while 41 percent are in support.” The AP poll is just the latest in a series of polls showing more Americans oppose the Democrats’ bills than support them.
As Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell explained on Fox News Sunday, “[T]he core of the bill is very contentious as well -- massive cuts in Medicare, huge tax increases on individuals and on businesses, and raising insurance premiums for 85 percent of the Americans who already have health insurance.”
“The American people are overwhelmingly telling us, ‘Don’t pass it,’” Sen. McConnell told Fox’s Chris Wallace, “It will be up to whether the Democratic majority wants to listen to the American people or whether they want to pass this anyway just to basically ignore the opinion of the American population and go ahead with this bill.”
Finally, what about the CONSTITUTION! Where does it give the government the right to mandate that its free citizens purchasing a product or service and if they don't, they get fined and and can be sent to jail! And we thought that having a King mandating a tea tax was bad.
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