Cost Of Health Care Legislation, Health Care,
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Tuesday December 22, 2009
Today's Zinger:
If you have to bribe and threaten people to get what you want, its probably not worth having or its illegal
Who Said It:
"Ours is a government of checks and balances. The Mafia and crooked businessmen make out checks, and the politicians and other compromised officials improve their bank balances".
The Morning Briefing:
Payoffs, threats and corruption. No, I’m not talking about the Mafia or the Latin gangs, I’m talking about the U.S. Senate and our Congress. To gain commitment to move the health care bill forward, Harry Reid has taken a page from the Cosa Nostra and Daniel Ortega. Zinger looks at the tactics of Harry Reid to secure the votes necessary to move a very poor piece of legislation forward. Payoffs, threats and corruption.
The Discussion:
Let me set an important piece of context. I, and the majority of Americans, are in full support of health care reform, as in real health care reform that changes the cost curve and insures all Americans. With that said I would like to address the health care insurance reform bill that is going to a vote in the Senate.
So Harry Reid has garnered the magical 60 votes needed to end discussion and prevent a filibuster of the Senate Health Care insurance Bill. Notice that I didn’t call it health care reform because it is not health care reform, rather legislative actions targeting the health insurance industry.
Senator Reid said that getting to the 60 votes was a real challenge. Senator Reid needed every Democrat (59+1 past Democrat) to vote for the bill to move it to the floor for a vote. No Republican voted for the bill. Senator Reid said that it was a real struggle that required significant negotiating skills to pull this off. These must be the same negotiating skills that the Mafia uses to win “consensus” from their targets. Bribes, payoffs and threats were needed to “convince” Democrats that this bill was right for America. Despite the fact that most Americans are against this bill, Mr. Reid forced the bill forward, but not before billions of dollars of payoffs had been handed out to certain Senators, and their states, to secure their vote. Not before Mr. Reid threatened certain Senators with loss of Committee positions if they did not vote for the bill.
Senator Reid calls it the “art of negotiation”. What negotiation? He threatened them and he bribed them. A matter of fact, When Senator Reid was interviewed about reaching critical mass with 60 votes and the payoffs needed to secure the filibuster proof majority, he said that if any Senator didn’t personally get what they wanted in the bill, its their own fault. Essentially all they had to do is ask. He, and President Obama, would have given them anything to get a health care bill passed.
Is this really how we want our government to function? What happened to President Obama’s commitment to end amendments to bills to stop wasteful spending? What about President Obama’s commitment to exclude special interests groups? Is it really appropriate that certain Senators or certain states be given different rules and regulations to allow them to operate differently then the other states, as a payoff for the vote? Have we gotten to a point that our government is unmanageable and ungovernable without graffe and payoffs or is that the price to pay for a very poorly written piece of legislation?
The art of negotiation is when a negotiator works with two sides with opposing views to come up with a compromise. In Harry Reid’s case, he worked with a few Democrats to pay them off and ignored and excluded 40 Senators that had a very different view of how to handle health care reform. That’s not negotiation.
Our country needs the give and take of different views to craft legislation. The notion that we exclude 40% of the Senate in order to avoid the conflict of someone with a different approach, all in the name of passing something, is ridiculous. Harry Reid, the Liberal left and many Democrats see passing the bill as a major victory. The liberal Democrats have rallied behind this health care bill as an opening to future universal health care. Their feeling is to pass any bill and they can fix it later. Zinger believes that if a bill is as flawed this one, the cost of fixing it is too great. Zinger sees this as a Senate that is totally out of touch with the American people and a Senate leadership that negotiates the way of the Mafia.
As you learn more about the health care legislation, keep in mind that much of the discussion will center around the “savings” that will be generated by this bill. Don’t be fooled. Savings are based on a set of assumptions. The assumptions in this bill are not realistic and are there to convince us that this bill is good for America.
I fear that due to the flaws of this bill, real health care reform will be lost for a very long time. The bill fails to address the costs of health care, despite what Harry Reid says. This bill fails to address Tort reform, despite what President Obama says. This bill will reward insurance companies and medical providers while focusing on insurance company premiums. All you have to do is watch the Wall Street share price of insurance companies, hospital companies, medical device companies, etc. and you will know the winners and losers of the bill. All of these companies have seen their share price increase in the past few days because Wall Street already has decided that it will be a boon to medical, not the reigning in of costs that we were told would happen. Negotiation….I don’t think so.
I will guarantee you that this bill will result in higher premiums, higher cost of health care and continued profits for drug companies, hospitals, doctors, tort lawyers and other health care providers. This is the group that truly drives the cost of health care. It represents 85-90% of all medical health spending. The administration and Congress are attacking the 10-15% of administrative cost and proclaiming health care reform through a small incremental improvement in the 10-15%. I will also guarantee you that if the Democrats are in office five years from now they will claim that the health care bill is a success, because costs are going up less than they would have without the bill. this is the same logic as they are currently using for unemployment and the same logic as the stimulus bill. The improvements will not be proven, rhetoric will take the place of results.
Most Americans will buy the Reid rhetoric because they just don’t know any better. Most Americans will buy the notion that any bill is better than no bill, because they don’t know any better. I am truly worried about the ability of our government to govern and for the American people to discern what good legislation from bad.
Who Said It:
“Ours is a government of checks and balances. The Mafia and crooked businessmen make out checks, and the politicians and other compromised officials improve their bank balances.”
Steve Allen
Comedian
Today's ZingerToon:
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Posted by ZK at 12/22/2009 10:59 AM 
Categories: Obama Administration, Social Issues, Healthcare
Tags: Health Care Legislation Healthcare
Categories: Obama Administration, Social Issues, Healthcare
Tags: Health Care Legislation Healthcare
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