The Senate Healthcare bill passed on Christmas Eve, on a strict party line vote, 60-39. The next step that needs to occur before any bill can be presented to President Obama for his signature is the reconciliation between the House version of the bill and Senate version of the bill. There are major differences between the two bills that need to be resolved. These main differences include:
SENATE BILL
- No allowance for Federal funding of abortion.
- No provision for ‘Public option’. Has a public-private co-op feature instead.
- Expanded Medi-care program
HOUSE BILL
- Allows federal funding for abortion
- ‘Public option’ is included in the bill.
- Includes provision for limiting Medi-care services. The so-called ‘death panels’.
These are major differences that need to be resolved in committee, so that the same bill can be voted on by both the House of Representatives and the Senate. What the final result of this reconciliation committee will be is anyone’s guess. Which provisions will remain, which ones will be deal busters, no one knows at this point. The latest information is that the goal is to have a finalized bill by mid -February.
It is important to know that once the bill is finalized in committee, it cannot be amended by either legislative body. It must be voted up or down in the exact form approved by the reconciliation committee.
It appears that the longer this issue is alive and in the news, the lower the public opinion polls on the healthcare bills are trending. The latest polls indicate that support for healthcare reform is now below 40%.
There are several items to have come to light in the last week, AFTER the passage of the Senate bill that should be of concern to Americans citizens. These items should have been of concern to our Senators, but obviously were not, since the bill passed on Christmas Eve.
There have been serious concerns raised concerning the constitutionality of the bill as it was passed. The two main concerns are:
1) The senate bill have language written into it that makes it illegal for future congresses to amend or repeal this bill. Many constitutional scholars have stated that this language is unconstitutional and would be found so by the Supreme Court. Why this type of language was written into the bill, and supported by every Democrat senator should be of concern to any voter.
2) Before he indicated that he would vote for the Senate bill, Senator Ben Nelson (Democrat, Nebraska) received a special consideration for the state of Nebraska, where Nebraska will be reimbursed by the Federal government for any increase in Medicaid expenses resulting from the ratification of the Federal Healthcare bill. This means that taxpayers in other states will pay for the Medicaid expenses in Nebraska. Several state Attorneys General have already indicated that they will sue under Federal statutes that provide for equal protection under the law.
The CBO (Congressional Budget Office) has gone over the financial aspects of the Senate bill and found that the figures used to promote the bill as ‘budget neutral’ were flawed. The purported savings in the Medi-care were also used to pay for other programs. In other words this amount of $250 billion dollars was counted twice, meaning that even if you use the figures in the bill, it will cost the American taxpayer $250 billion. It has been joked that the bill would be revenue neutral if it didn’t require billions of dollars in bribes to obtain the votes needed for passage.
