Kill the Bill

Congress should kill the Health Care bill immediately. There is no good argument for passing it. It does not meet its original intent of "bending the curve down." Instead it will bend it up. Any long-term savings will come through the draconian practice of limiting coverage so that people will be less likely to seek care. It will not be deficit-neutral. Any pretense that it would reduce the deficit (through future cuts in benefits) were abandoned with the compromise with the unions. It imposes an economic burden on young, healthy people who do not have the minimum coverage the bill requires.

There is no mandate for this bill. While it is true that Barack Obama included health care reform in his platform, this bill is at odds with Obama's promises:

• Obama promised to allow importation of cheap Canadian drugs. That was dropped in an early round of deal-making.
• Hillary Clinton included an individual mandate in her health care proposal. Obama ridiculed this in a debate and ran campaign ads against it.
• John McCain suggested taxing current benefits to pay for his health care proposal. Again, Obama campaigned against this.

The most recent compromise is one of the most outrageous. Non-union and private industry workers will have their benefits capped but government union workers will not. To show how this works, my benefits are likely to be taxed (I work for local government but am not in a job class covered by a union) but the people I supervise will not be taxed. I should add that pay and job responsibilities have nothing to do with it. I am a working supervisor. Most of my time is spent doing the same job as the people I supervise. Further, two of the six make more than I do. On a national scale, Nebraska is exempt from extra costs that the other 49 states will have to pay because of back room deals. So much for equal protection under the law.

At this point the election result in Massachusetts is still unknown. The fact that it was ever close shows what a bad idea the health care bill is. In a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans three to one and every state office is held by a Democrat, the special election to fill Ted Kennedy's seat should be a forgone conclusion. If a traditionally liberal state has turned against the bill then imagine how the rest of the country feels about it.

No one can say with a straight face that this is a good bill. The hope that the public will come to love it once it comes into effect (well after the 2012 presidential election) is baseless. Instead this has become a contest of wills. Obama and the congressional leaders are fixated on passing something and no longer care about the actual outcome. Vanity and stubbornness are poor reasons for taking over a sixth of the nation's economy.