|
|
|
As liberals rush ObamaCare through Congress, let's review the disparity between promises and text. Joe Wilson's declaration "You lie!" is ringing truer with each passing day. Barack Obama promised "transparency" and giving the public five days to read the bill, but Senator Jim Bunning's (R-KY) amendment to require the bill to be posted online 72 hours before the vote, was defeated. Rep. Brian Baird (D-WA) and Rep. Greg Walden (R- OR) tried to get the House to post the bill 72 hours before the vote, but while most Republicans have signed on, the Nancy Pelosi leadership is unwilling. Obama promised that if you like your current health insurance you won't have to change it, but Senator John Cornyn's (R-TX) amendment to assure present insurance owners that they won't have to change their coverage, and that they can keep the coverage they have with their current employer without government driving up cost, was defeated. Obama's appointment of 34 czars includes a Health Care Czar, but Senator John Ensign's (R-NV) amendment to require any health-care czar to be subject to the constitutional Senate confirmation process was defeated. Obama's new Regulatory Czar, Cass Sunstein, defends removing organs from terminally ill patients and from deceased persons even though they did not consent to be organ donors. Obama promised that "under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions," But the Democrats five times (twice in Senate committees, three times in House committees) defeated amendments to prohibit the health-care plan from spending federal money or requiring health insurance plans to cover abortions. One amendment that did pass was Senator Maria Cantwell's (D-WA) amendment that gives the Secretary of Health and Human Services the power to define cost-effective care for each medical condition and to punish doctors who treat high-cost patients with complex conditions. That was Obama's goal from the beginning and will inevitably lead to the "death panels" Sarah Palin warned about. Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and a key Obama health-care adviser, may be behind the Stimulus legislation that will send "embedded clinical-decision support" to doctors via computer to warn them about what is "appropriate" and "cost-effective," backed up by the threat to impose financial penalties on doctors who are not "meaningful users." The Democrats' health-care "reform" carries a trillion-dollar price tag, will vastly increase the national debt hanging over our children and grandchildren, impose socialist control over one-sixth of our economy, and force us to obey totalitarian dictates. The mandate on individuals to buy health insurance or pay a penalty, even threatening jail for those who fail to conform, amounts to a massive tax increase on individuals and families whose health insurance may lack all the new federally specified requirements. The mandate on employers to provide health insurance will result in lower wages and fewer jobs. Finally, we are subject to the deviousness of what House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) calls the 70 phantom amendments that were added in secret after the bill was voted by the committee. |
