By now we’ve all heard the president’s pitch for “health care reform.”
To summarize: 46 million Americans are medically uninsured. This is a disgrace in the “richest nation on Earth.” Health care is a basic human right. “Health care reform” will guarantee every American affordable health insurance, regardless of ability to pay. The result of “reform” will be higher quality care available to more people at a lower cost. Any American satisfied with current insurance can keep it, and you can also keep the doctor of your choice.
Congress has translated the president’s aspirational statements into a bill that “covers 97 percent” of Americans (leaving 10 million people still uninsured), creates a massive new and costly federal bureaucracy (at least $1 trillion in new spending – and taxes – over the next 10 years), and creates a government insurance company that could crowd out private insurers and force up to 114 million American workers off the current insurance they like to the government insurance and a doctor of the government’s choice.
The debate is heating up on each of these points, but one thing is already clear: Members of Congress are not included in the “reform.” They intend to keep the very generous benefits they granted themselves in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, or FEHBP.
Freshman Rep. John Fleming, R.-La., has introduced HR 615 providing a “sense of the House of Representatives” that members of the House who vote for the government insurance option should quit FEHBP and join the new “reform” program.
If the “reform” is critically needed for us, shouldn’t it be good enough for the representatives who vote for it? In other words, should Congress exempt itself from the laws it seeks to impose on the rest of us?
Rep. Fleming is a family physician and opposes the “reform.” He has already garnered 60 co-sponsors of HR 615. Is your representative a co-sponsor? If not, does your representative favor or oppose HR 615? You should ask.
And while you’re at it, ask if your representative is going to read the bill before voting on it.
House Republican leader John Boehner has called on Speaker Pelosi to hold voting on any pending bill to give House members a chance to read the bill, and to give the American public 72 hours to read a bill in its final form before a final vote of the House is taken.
Boehner’s request followed the House recent vote on the cap-and-trade climate bill when the members received the last 300 pages of the bill at 3 a.m. on the day of the vote, bringing the bill to more than 1,500 pages of unknown content.
Most Americans rightfully assume that members of Congress have read and know what they’re voting on. Apparently, this bedrock notion of how a “representative democracy” should operate is naïve.
Speaker Pelosi was asked about Boehner’s request. She dismissed it with a sarcastic laugh (reporters joined in the laughter), asking whether Boehner had read all the bills he has voted on.
The cynical acceptance of the corruption of the constitutional law making process has not gone unnoticed.
A group called Let Freedom Ring has presented every member of Congress with a petition that states:
I pledge to my constituents and the American people that I will not vote to enact any health care reform package that: 1) I have not read, personally, in its entirety and 2) has not been available, in its entirety, to the American people on the Internet for at least 72 hours, so that they can read it, too.
Legislation to borrow and spend trillions of dollars to transform our country from an opportunity society to a security society – from a free country to a government dominated social order – should be fully known and debated by the public and by Congress.
It is treason resulting in tyranny to rush thousands of pages of law through Congress that no member has read and of which the public is only dimly aware.
With “health care reform” and cap and trade pending in Congress, the time to act is now.
