Republicans are exulting over the defeat of Martha Coakley in Massachusetts and the seeming defeat of the “healthcare reform” bill. To quote Senator Coburn, “This bill will be turned into toilet paper,” and “The American people stopped this bill today.”
Even so, the Progressive movement is ramping up efforts to salvage the “healthcare reform” that the voters just trounced. And some Republicans, along with the AMA, support them.
Scott Brown, although he promised to be the “41st Senator” for stopping the bill in its current form, is saying “I think it’s important for everyone to get some form of health care, to offer a basic plan for everybody I think is important”.
The AMA is on the record as supporting the Senate bill that passed. On Jan 21, its officials, along with AARP, sent another letter to Congress on one issue: repealing the sustained growth rate (SGR) formula for price-fixing, which would result in its replacement by some other formula for price-fixing. And MoveOn.org is launching an emergency campaign to “save real health care reform.”
MoveOn.org plans to point out, in full-page newspaper ads, that there is still the chance to “pass an even stronger bill, including the popular public option,” with only 51 Senate votes in a budget-reconciliation package (the “nuclear option”). It claims that the election results signify that the Senate did not go far enough!
AAPS states that it’s NOT “back to the drawing board” to tweak thousand-page monstrosities. They need to be killed.
The key idea, which will lead inevitably to a complete government takeover, is the unconstitutional mandate, on private persons and businesses, to buy insurance.
The federal government has NO Constitutional authority to force people to buy a certain product as a condition of being alive. Nor does it have the Constitutional authority to “provide healthcare for all,” to dictate the terms of private contracts (including insurance contracts), to dictate the way in which physicians keep their records, to require reporting patient data to government, to define what constitutes a “preventive service” or “quality of care,” or to perform myriad other functions in the bill.
The bill does not “reform” insurance—it abolishes true insurance. It would make it impossible for a person ever to pay a market price for insurance—i.e. a risk-based premium—while forcing all to participate in a collectivized, government-approved prepayment scheme for government-approved benefits.
Both Democrats and Republicans need to hear that the voters have spoken: they are opposed to the misbegotten “reform.” They are sick of back-room deals, bribes, deceit, and treachery. They want simple, straightforward, transparent bills that respect the law of the land, the U.S. Constitution, and proceed through an orderly legislative process with full hearings and debate.
Stay tuned for announcements on congressional doings, and for AAPS action plans, next week.
