There really shouldn't be any debate. The Health Care Restructuring Plan being secretly negotiated by top Democrats can, should and must be defeated. Not one single ethical, honest, principled Democrat should support this betrayal. And the Republicans already won't support it. The damned vote should be a unanimous and resounding "NO!"
But, alas, President Obama has decreed that any bill, no matter how flawed, is better than no bill at all. And Nancy Pelosi never had any principles. She is a pure partisan who only cares about victory. Therefore, Pelosi, Harry Reid and members of the President's team are negotiating in secret to develop the final albatross to be hung around America's neck.
However, as more and more Democrats and all Americans realize the Barack Obama has consistently broken every campaign promise, there are the seeds of rebellion in the ranks. Today's domino falling is C-SPAN, the broadcaster of record for the United States Congress.
C-SPAN Challenges Congress to Open Health Care Talks to TV Coverage: "The head of C-SPAN has implored Congress to open up the last leg of health care reform negotiations to the public, as top Democrats lay plans to hash out the final product among themselves."
"C-SPAN CEO Brian Lamb wrote to leaders in the House and Senate Dec. 30 urging them to open "all important negotiations, including any conference committee meetings," to televised coverage on his network."
""The C-SPAN networks will commit the necessary resources to covering all of the sessions LIVE and in their entirety," he wrote."
President Obama had specifically promised these negotiations would appear on C-SPAN as he campaigned for the Presidency. His silence is deafening now.
Why is this happening? Any daylight will most assuredly kill this bill. It stinks to high heaven. If the public were to get even a whiff of this putrid and poisonous concoction, they would demand its defeat.
So Obama and Pelosi and Reid will keep it top secret until mere hours (or even minutes) before forcing a vote, probably in the middle of the night, on a weekend.
The American Public has been lied to, and now betrayed.
Even C-SPAN has noticed.
5 comments:
Freedom Eden has a great posting on this topic today.
CNN DEBATE
JANUARY 2OO8
"Not negotiating behind closed doors but bringing all parties together and broadcasting those negotiations on C-SPAN so that the American people can see what the choices are, 'cause part of what we have to do is enlist the American people in this process."
I believe Obama's failure to live up to his campaign promise to open up the #hcr debate on C-SPAN is his "read my lips, no new taxes" moment.
There will be a bill. Some will whine, most will be content that something got passed. No one will care about Obama and C-Span except Fox Noise and its fans.
The people who are content with a bill along the lines of the one passed by the Senate are fools. In return for ceding de facto control of one-sixth of the American economy, and our health care decisions, we will get less services, more delays, and spend more. Just wait until that 40% surtax on your "cadillac" health plan kicks in, and you belatedly discover that you have a cadillac health plan, or had one. Once the private insurance industry is unable to cope with the demands require by Congress and make a profit, the government will of course expand whatever euphemism they install for single-payer coverage and enact it by stages. Welcome to the NHS, where patients wait months to get tests or procedures, where patients are stacked up outside hospitals so they don't have to count them as admissions so they can meet their targets on treatment times. Or better yet, welcome to the Japanese system, where in order to get good care all you need are three private insurance policies in addition to the government coverage, and an uncle who runs a hospital so you can get in right away, and plenty of bribes for the staff so you can get the kind of service we take for granted now.
Welcome to the third world, America. I'm sure that all those who support such a takeover will be glad to claim credit when we are worse off than now, which will happen because you can't repeal the laws of economics.
MadMike: your response demonstrates why I will always have far more respect for Wiz than for you: you both want basically the same thing in universal coverage. Wiz, however, isn't willing to sacrifice all principles to get closer to that goal.
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