I listened to the President's speech last night with a somewhat skeptical ear. But I tried to keep an open mind. He was obviously passionate and visibly irritated with those who disagree with him, but he said some good things. I am concerned however, that it is just a bunch of words. People love to have their "ears tickled" with what they want to hear and politicians are master ear-ticklers. I am withholding judgment until I see any actual legislation that includes the things he promised last night.
You see, he kept talking about, "my plan", but he hasn't written a bill. He has left that job to the House and Senate. That's fine--that's their job. But I have read the House version of the bill and the promises he made last night are simply not contained in it. If those promises are to be met, a new bill must be authored because the current House version of the bill is totally irreconcilable with the President's speech. For example:
1) Illegal aliens won't be treated. There is a vague provision in the bill about this, but Obama has said that he wants to grant the illegal aliens citizenship. So technically, they will be citizens, but will they be contributing any more to our economy then than they are now?
2) Abortion will not be paid for by federal dollars. It is not specifically prohibited in the bill--it is not addressed at all. Are we simply to trust his word alone, his solemn promise, that it will not happen? Forgive me if I don't trust government to act upon his word alone.
3) An insurance co-op will be created instead of a public option. There is no mention (that I can remember, at least) of said co-op in the house bill. Instead, pages and pages of the bill empower the government to have the final say on what will be insured, what will be treated and how much will be paid. That is not a co-op--it is government health care. It does not matter what you call it, if the verbiage of the bill is not changed, you have simply re-labeled it.
4) You will be forced to have minimum health coverage. How is this to be enforced? Are health care providers to become the health insurance police? In the current bill it will be enforced by the IRS, through fines and intra-government information sharing. What is the plan Mr. Obama? What are the details? You are long on rhetoric and short on details. I will read the next bill that comes out and then I will make my final judgment.
I don't disagree that we need to make some reforms in our medical system, but I have grave concerns about the government's ability to fix anything. They have bankrupted Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid, we are running a ridiculous deficit and frankly they are a bunch of self-serving idiots. If they do not scrap the existing bill in the House, it will be the largest power-grab, the grossest over-reaching of government authority in the history of this country. The private sector needs to step up and make the necessary fixes on their own, this is not the government's place.
Stay tuned....
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