Benemax

On Thursday of this week, President Obama is scheduled to meet Republican and Democratic leaders in a televised summit. The stated purpose: Find common ground. The more likely purpose: Re-engage the interest of the American people, create a ‘bully pulpit’ for the President to preach the message of reform, and of course, paint the Republicans as evil obstructionists.

In advance of the meeting, the President is likely to present his own version of Health Care Reform, a proposal that will probably include many of the features of the current House and Senate bills. It is possible, but my no means certain, that this “consensus” bill will include some brand new ideas from the President himself and/or some new provisions designed to appeal to Republicans in general (or to Olympia Snowe in particular) along with the disaffected American majority.

Finally, according to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the Democrats have decided to rely on a legislative maneuver called “Reconcilliation” to get the bill through the Senate with only 51 votes (vs. 60). Reconcilliation is designed to be used for budgetary matters only, not to decide policy questions. It is hard to see how the use of this technique could possibly be appropriate for a bill that amounts to the biggest single policy shift in the history of The United States. But that doesn’t mean it won’t be tried.

The maneuver is fraught with risk. First, it is likely that a number of Democratic Senators who voted for the bill the first time will vote against it if their leadership resorts to  Reconcilliation. 10 Democrats would have to switch sides to change the outcome, and that is unlikely, but the loss of even a half dozen Democratic votes will be embarrassing for the President and the Congressional leadership.

Second, the new bill would still have to pass the House. Due to deaths and resignations, it is unclear whether the votes to pass this legislation are still there…even if not one Democrat switches sides after seeing what happend to their party in Massachusetts. Plus there are at least 11 anti-abortion Democrats who voted for the bill the first time but may not vote for it this time unless it contains strict pro-life provisions (which is unlikely).  

Third, it is possible that the courts might nullify all or part of this legislation if they find that the Reconcilliation process has been abused, i.e. if the find that the Senate did not follow its own rules. Courts traditionally dislike meddling in the affairs of the other branches of government but this could be deemed sufficient cause for a departure from that policy.

The following quote from Aetna says it all:

“In an effort to resuscitate health reform, President Obama has invited Republicans and Democrats to the White House for a February 25 summit. Whether this is just a way to postpone the inevitable, as some believe, announcement that health reform is dead for 2010 or whether the President truly believes he can get the patient up and moving again, remains as unclear as everything else surrounding reform.”

This afternoon, Senator-elect Scott Brown (R-MA) is scheduled to be sworn in, thereby becoming the 41st Republican in the U.S. Senate and the one vote the Republicans need to block the current version of Health Care Reform (and, potentially, other pieces of the President’s legislative program). Congratulations, Senator Brown!

But there’s an even bigger story. On Monday, Danny Williams, the far-left Premier of the Canadian Province of Labrador and Newfoundland, slipped across the US/Canada border and headed to an “undisclosed location” (rumored to be the Cleveland Clinic) for life saving heart surgery that he could not get for 182 days under Canada’s socialized health care system (a system Mr. Williams strongly supports and even helped architect). Premier Williams joins 41,000 other Canadians who come to the U.S. each year for health care.

Welcome, Premier Williams! I’m glad that the worlds’s greatest health care system, supported by the world’s greatest free market economy could help save your life. But I do have two questions for you:

(1) If it’s ok for YOU to receive this life saving surgery when you need it, why isn’t it ok for less affluent Canadians to receive the same life saving treatment in the same urgent time frame when they need it? The basic fact that most advocates of government controlled health care fail to address is that poorest resident of the U.S., citizen or not, documented or not,  insured or not, would have access to life saving heart surgery if they needed it…and they wouldn’t have to wait 182 days. So WHO is the real “liberal”…really?

(2) Once government takes over the U.S. health care system and rebuilds it in the image and likeness of Canada, where will you and the members of your family go when you urgently need medical care? And even more importantly, where will we go??????????????