Healthcare Bill Confusion

If you want to understand what is going on in Washington you really must watch and read 24/7. There is so much mis-information out there and much of it comes from the people who bring us the news. Sometimes it comes across as though they don't understand it and sometimes they intentionally misrepresent.

I would like to offer my simple explanation, not of the bill but of how the process works.

In order for a bill go to the President's desk to be signed into law, it first must be passed by both the House and the Senate. And it must be passed in exactly the same form. No differences. So now the current bill. It was passed in the Senate in December. The House must now pass it in the exact same form. They cannot change it at all. So when you hear people like Debbie Wasserman Schultz say (as she did yesterday on Fox News) that all the sweetheart deals have been taken out, it is a total untruth...a lie. Yet she stands there and says it.

What she didn't say was that if a second bill, which the House has written to make changes to the Senate bill, is passed by the Senate, without any changes, then and only then will that bill go to the President for his signature and it would then take effect and make the changes to the original bill.

This second bill is called a reconciliation bill. A bill making these kinds of changes to our law would usually have to pass the Senate with at least 60 yea votes. The sneaky thing here is that the reconciliation bill can be passed with a simple majority of 1 vote.

Only budgetary changes can be changed with a reconciliation bill so many of the changes the House wants to make can probably not be made and if the Senate makes even one change the bill will then have to go back to the House to be passed in it's changed form.

Remember the original Senate bill, if passed by the House and signed by the President will become law with or without the second bill which contains the changes. Remember also that all those sweetheart deals which everyone was upset about in December will be signed into law.

What about the CBO score? The score that everyone talks about and which the Democrats stake everything on is not correct because the CBO can only use information given to them. They cannot do any outside checking, they must base their numbers on what the bill says will happen and usually it doesn't happen. Medicare costs today are many times what congress said they would be.

The bill uses the same dollar figures which they say will be saved from medicare to both extend medicare and to help pay for the new healthcare benefits. Everyone knows it is double counting but the CBO must include it because they cannot change it.

Just a couple more thoughts...Do you really believe that the government can handle healthcare and handle it well? Think of your last trip to the DMV or the Post Office. Do you really believe 30 million more people can be added to the medical rolls and save money?

And this, those 30 million people who have no insurance how many of them do you think can afford insurance? If they can''t afford it now why does anyone think they will be able to afford it later. They will be funded by the government and where does that money come from?