Health Care Bill Summarized in One Sentence: A Public Service of This Blog

Readers of this blog (all two of you--not including my daughters for whom it was bascially meant, although I had hoped for a wider audience) may feel put upon You are subjected to lengthy, verbose entries that sometimes include frustrating anagrams (as my hands get on the wrong keys, and my attention wanders as I type merrily along). Now you could regard the anagram puzzles as entertainment, and remind yourself that such puzzles are featured in at least one Sherlock Holmes story, and often in your daily newspaper. Still, that problem has induced me to go back to the agony (with my eyesight, or lack thereof) of at least limited use of "spell "check" to try to cut down on typos extending for entire sentences or longer. However, I am going to make up for it with this entry. You do not have to read the THOUSAND pages of the House health care "reform" bill. Further, you do not have to read the Senate bills to come, or the ultimate "compromise" bill to come. This entry will boil ALL of those bills down to one sentence--two at the most.


Health care bill (in full): "The relevant Federal agencies shall have the power to make such regulations as they reasonably deem appropriate to provide what should be in all new health insurance policies issued in this country, and such regulations as shall be required to contain health care costs in this country. Oh, by the way, the relevant federal agencies--including any news ones created, and any quasi-government entities created--shall have a blank check to spend whatever moeny is deemed appropriate to subsidize co-ops, and any other quasi-government or other entities, to such degree necessary to insure all Americans--with the power to require all Americans to enroll in sluch subsidized insurance."


With or without a "government option", the above honestly states what Democrats, and many Republicans, are ultimately trying to do here. They are trying to give Federal bureaucrats control over what is covered by heatlh care insurance in this country--thereby aslo giving them control ol the medical care provided in this country. Does the above say that Federal bureaucrats will have the "right" to "pull the plug on grandma"? Of course not, but it does give Federal bureaucrats the ultimate power over life and death--the power to determine what health care EVERYONE gets--including what health care is "cost effective" and what health care is not. That may well ultimately result in grandma not getting that pacemaker. The mistake the House Democrats made was to MENTION the idea of "end of life" care as a special concern. The idea of these bills is to be vague enough, and complicated enough, that they leave the ultimate power to Federal bureaucrats to assert such power as they want from the vague language of the bill--limited only loosely by the amount of money actually appropriated.


Before you doubt me on the above, you might want to recall the initial TARP bill proposed by Hank Paulson. It simply provided for 700 billion dollars for the Secretary of the Treasury to use, any way he liked, to "save" the economy. That was at least hones. But the Democrats in Congress said they would "never" vote for a blank check, and turned the bill into a complicated Democratic "wish list" of spending and "oversight". What a farce of a debate that was!!!! The House defeated the stupid Democratic bill, and then there as a "compromise". What was that compromise? It turns out that all of the many pages of the bill, with all of those complicated provisions, had done nothing except add some Democratic spending. The Secretary of the Treasury DID get a BLANK CHECK, to spend the $700 billion any way he wanted. You will remember that Paulson quickly ABANDONED the concept of purchase of "toxic assets" he had originally proposed, and instead simply directly "invested in" (bailed out) BANKS, Brokerage houses, AIG and GM--among others.


Most Federal legislation is not designed to be clear. It is designed to turn power over to the Federal bureaucracy. Indeed, on health care how could it be otherwise? Is Congress really going to specify exactly what every insurance policy in the country will cover? Exactly what medical care procedures will be paid for and which excluded? Nope. To the extent House Democrats tried to specify pet items, they made a MISTAKE. However, it is we that are going to make a mistake if we let a "compromise" turn the health care system over the the Federal bureaucracy, which will then assume control over another significant part of our lives--resulting in the ultimate destruction of this country as we once knew it.