Just What Is In This Bill?

I don’t know whether it is a good thing or not if President Obama’s healthcare bill clears Congress. As a general rule I am against government intervention because the more bureaucratic something becomes, the less efficiently it is run. Yet, it is clear that healthcare costs in our nation are outrageous and have become unaffordable for most people. Something must be done. But what concerns and confuses me most is not receiving straight answers from either party about what is actually in the healthcare bill.

House Republican Leader John Boehner’s website alleges that “Sen. Reid’s Government-Run Health Plan STILL Requires a Monthly Abortion Fee.” Some Dems argue otherwise. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid would rather toss hyperbole than give specifics about the bill, insisting that “on average, an American dies from lack of health insurance every 10 minutes.” Not to be outdone in the hyperbole department, Republicans insist the healthcare bill contains “death panels” that will decide when people have lived long enough. But clearly the award for most outlandish and least informative piece of hyperbole goes to Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse who labeled Republican supporters as “the birthers, the fanatics, the people running around in right-wing militia and Aryan support groups.” He then added that “it is unbearable to them that President Barack Obama should exist.”

Uh, thank you, Senator.

Hyperbole is the norm when it comes to PR and marketing, and it is found in even greater amounts in our capitol. Yet, it doesn’t explain the Democrats’ covertness about the contents of their bill. If I were completing legislation that would solve our nation’s healthcare problems, I would be imitating British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain when he waved the Munich Pact and declared it would be “peace for out time”. Perhaps the Dems are not blowing their own horns because there are things in this bill that Americans will find objectionable. After all, why the need for stealth? Why hold a procedural vote in the wee hours of a Monday morning following a record-breaking snow storm in Washington, DC?

Perhaps just as the Munich Pact failed to deliver peace, this healthcare bill will fail to deliver acceptable healthcare reform.