The Revised Senate/Baucus Health Care So-called “Bill” – A Mistake Inside a Sham Surrounded By a Lie

Sorting through the Democrat smoke about the latest developments regarding the Senate Finance version of health care reform – also known as the “Baucus bill”:

1. There is no “bill” – there is no legislative language that has been reduced to paper that can be read to begin to understand the details of what the Democrats are proposing to do (link);

2. The Democrats are working with a “plain-English” conceptual “framework” of what the bill intends to say; in other words, all of the very important details and the specific wording that can mean the difference between lightning and a lightning bug do not exist to be read and thought about (link);

3. Furthermore, most Democrats have no intention of ever putting any legislative language on the internet for citizens to read and think about, and a proposal to do just that has been defeated in the Senate Finance committee by the majority Democrats (link); Why? -- because Democrats think citizens as well as themselves will just be “confused” by the actual legislative language (link), but the real reason is to hide the objectionable nature of many of the provisions, such as the hidden financial pressure on physicians to withhold care for Medicare patients, called by some “death panels by proxy” (link) or by me each patient’s "personal death panel” (link);

4. Nevertheless, the Senate Democrats asked the Congressional Budget Office to evaluate the costs of (i.e., “score”) the “plain-English conceptual framework” of the bill; this it just did (link), with a result less unfavorable to the Democrat proponents than before, so that now the Democrats are claiming victory (the “bill” won’t add to the deficit) and are pretending that the CBO “scored” an actual proposed piece of legislation rather than the plain-English conceptual framework;

5. This Senate Finance “conceptual framework” essentially calls for a new entitlement that the CBO says will cost about $829 billion over 10 years and actually save $81 billion (link). Yes, spend $829 billion to save $81 billion. Who could possibly believe this nonsense? Sentient beings know this "bill" would wind up costing much, much more, as programs like these always have.

6. And where will the $829 billion come from (link) so that this new program will be “budget neutral” so as not to add to the federal deficit? Well, from new taxes, which of course will not be called new taxes, and from deep cuts to Medicare (over $400 billion) that the Democrats know will never in actual fact happen. No one, no one, honestly can actually believe that Democrats will be cutting over $400 billion from Medicare. Apart from the merits or demerits of the actual content, anyone who believes this latest proposal will not add to the deficit in a big way is either a fool or a liar (as President Obama would say, I'm just "speaking truth to power" against "those would would bear false witness").

7. To those that disagree with the content of this “conceptual framework”, and who bemoan the secret, very non-transparent way the Democrats are trying to push it through, and who decry the dishonest way the cost and method of payment are being pitched, this whole sordid episode in Congressional history is a mistake inside a sham surrounded by a lie.


John M Greco