Tag Archives: Health Care Reform

How At Least One Democrat Thinks Congress Works

March 21, 2010 – 12:21 am

And, for all I know, how at least one Democrat thinks Congress ought to work. Let’s give the mike to Alcee Hastings, who offers commentary on sausage-making related to the health care reform debate:

Notes Glenn Reynolds (from whom I am stealing this), “doesn’t it say a lot about this Congress that a guy who was kicked off the bench for corruption — by a Democratic-controlled Congress, no less — is now on the Rules Committee?”

By Pejman Yousefzadeh | Posted in Chequer-Board | Also tagged , , , , , , | Comments

“Deem And Pass” Violates The Constitution

March 20, 2010 – 10:08 am

No other conclusion can be drawn, as former judge, and current Stanford law professor Michael McConnell points out:

In just a few days the House of Representatives is expected to act on two different pieces of legislation: the Senate version of the health-care bill (the one that contains the special deals, “Cadillac” insurance plan taxes, and abortion coverage) and an amendatory bill making changes in the Senate bill. The House will likely adopt a “self-executing” rule that “deems” passage of the amendatory bill as enactment of the Senate bill, without an actual vote on the latter.

This enables the House to enact the Senate bill while appearing only to approve changes to it. The underlying Senate bill would then go to the president for signature, and the amendatory bill would go to the Senate for consideration under reconciliation procedures (meaning no filibuster).

By Pejman Yousefzadeh | Posted in Chequer-Board | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments

Dear House Of Representatives

March 20, 2010 – 9:56 am

The Senate is not quite willing to commit to reconciliation.

Still want to pass the Senate bill?

By Pejman Yousefzadeh | Posted in Chequer-Board | Also tagged , , , , , , | Comments

Eleventh Hour Negotiations on Health Care

March 20, 2010 – 7:42 am

On Capitol Hill, the Rules Committee is meeting this morning to run through some last minute amendments to the health care legislation. You can read those here. But they’re irrelevant — it’s clear the final standoff on Capitol Hill in the eleventh hour of the health care debate will be over Rep. Bart Stupak’s small band of fellow Democrats who oppose taxpayer funding for abortions.

The mere fact that Speaker Nancy Pelosi is conversing with Stupak behind closed doors at this late moment is a sign that she remains short of the vote total needed to pass the Senate bill, even after the imposition of the so-called “Slaughter strategy” to give political cover to members. There are still many concerns among Blue Dog Democrats that the bill in question will not sufficiently address the cost problems of the health care system, and the latest exchange with the Congressional Budget Office has done little to assuage their worries.

It is Stupak’s small coalition, which once numbered 12 but now seems closer to 3, who could decide the entire issue.

By Ben Domenech | Posted in Blogs, The Whip | Also tagged , , , , , | Comments

Bart Stupak’s Moment Of Truth

March 19, 2010 – 11:44 pm

There ought to be no doubt by now but that the health care reform bill before the House is a deficient piece of legislation. About the only thing standing between the bill and final passage is Bart Stupak and his caucus of pro-life Democrats. If they waver, a bad bill passes. And the concern is that they may waver:

Representative Bart Stupak, a Michigan Democrat who leads a group pressing for the tougher restrictions, is planning a press conference today to discuss his request for an abortion vote. His legislative director, Nick Choate, declined to comment.

By Pejman Yousefzadeh | Posted in Chequer-Board | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments

From Paul Ryan’s Mailbag

March 19, 2010 – 9:52 pm

An admission from the Congressional Budget Office: Factor in the “doc fix”, and one finds that $59 billion is added to the deficit over the next ten years.

Remind me why anyone is supposed to think that the health care reform bill before the House is the best bill that we can get.

By Pejman Yousefzadeh | Posted in Chequer-Board | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments

Obamacare’s End

March 19, 2010 – 4:58 pm

Coffee & Markets will wait til Sunday (we want to see how things turn out), so here’s a brief podcast with a few thoughts from me on the eve of health care reform’s final vote: “Obama’s dedication to passing this spectacularly flawed and unpopular health care bill appears to be based on the assumption that the American people like a winner even if the victory comes at their expense.”

You can read the whole thing at CBS News.

Related Links:

TNL: How Obamacare Will Reshape the Workforce
DC Examiner: Pro Reform Liberals Admit This Wasn’t a Battle Against Special Interests
Heritage: More Bad News in the House Health Care Bill
Keith Hennessey: Understanding the Health Care Bill
Jane Hamsher: 18 Myths About HCR Debunked
The Note: Rep. Frank Says HCR Could Still Fail
NRO: Obamacare’s IRS Connection
NEMJ: 46% of Family Doctors Forced Out of Medicine Under Obamacare
Fred Barnes: Health Care Wars Only Beginning

By Ben Domenech | Posted in Blogs, Podcasts, The Whip | Also tagged , , , , | Comments

Scoring The Health Care Bill

March 19, 2010 – 7:51 am

Democrats are ecstatic about the score given to the health care bill by the Congressional Budget Office. One wonders why, given a close analysis of the bill and the score. Let’s turn the mike over to Jeffrey Anderson:

For a variety of reasons, this tally doesn’t remotely reflect the bill’s real ten-year costs. First, it includes 2010 as the initial year. As most people are well aware, 2010 has now been underway for some time. Therefore, the CBO would normally count 2011 as the first year of its analysis, just as it counted 2010 as the first year when analyzing the initial House health bill in the middle of 2009. But under strict instructions from Democratic leaders, and over strong objections from Republicans, the CBO dutifully scored 2010 as the first year of the latest version of Obamacare. If the clock were started in 2011, the first full year that the bill could possibly be in effect, the CBO says that the bill’s ten-year costs would be $1.2 trillion.

By Pejman Yousefzadeh | Posted in Chequer-Board | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments

Could “Deem And Pass” Be Constitutionally Challenged?

March 18, 2010 – 11:40 pm

At the very least, it appears to be worth a shot. As mentioned, unlike the case in Marshall Field, an actual Constitutional provision–Art. I, Sec. 7–is implicated. As Jonathan Adler notes, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals may be willing to analogize any challenge to the one that was issued in Public Citizen, thus causing it to rule the same way that it did in Public Citizen. But since the Supreme Court may well think differently, and since there is ample cause for it to think differently, a Constitutional challenge to the use of the “deem and pass” rule should very much be found to be on the table.

Of course, if we could just have a straight up-or-down vote in the House on health care reform, perhaps we could avoid any litigation altogether. But that apparently is not going to be a luxury we can enjoy, now is it?

By Pejman Yousefzadeh | Posted in Chequer-Board | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments

Tea Leaves

March 18, 2010 – 6:45 am

So, there may be no vote on the health care package this weekend because House Democrats suddenly decided that they want to wait for the CBO score? I don’t know about anyone else, but I read this as meaning that the House Democratic leadership believes–the pledges of “yes” votes from the likes of Dennis Kucinich notwithstanding–that they don’t have the votes.

By Pejman Yousefzadeh | Posted in Chequer-Board | Also tagged , , , , , , , | Comments

The Illogic And Injustice Of Deem And Pass

March 17, 2010 – 6:36 am

Law professor and former Tenth Circuit judge Michael McConnell puts the issue succinctly on Speaker Pelosi’s proposed “deem and pass” scheme. I don’t have a WSJ subscription, but fortunately, Michael Cannon does, and he has excerpted the pertinent analysis:

Under Article I, Section 7, passage of one bill cannot be deemed to be enactment of another.

The Slaughter solution attempts to allow the House to pass the Senate bill, plus a bill amending it, with a single vote. The senators would then vote only on the amendatory bill. But this means that no single bill will have passed both houses in the same form. As the Supreme Court wrote in Clinton v. City of New York (1998), a bill containing the “exact text” must be approved by one house; the other house must approve “precisely the same text.”

By Pejman Yousefzadeh | Posted in Chequer-Board | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments

Health Care Reform Myths

March 16, 2010 – 6:44 am

Robert Samuelson demolishes them:

How often, for example, have you heard the emergency-room argument? The uninsured, it’s said, use emergency rooms for primary care. That’s expensive and ineffective. Once they’re insured, they’ll have regular doctors. Care will improve; costs will decline. Everyone wins. Great argument. Unfortunately, it’s untrue.

A study by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found that the insured accounted for 83 percent of emergency-room visits, reflecting their share of the population. After Massachusetts adopted universal insurance, emergency-room use remained higher than the national average, an Urban Institute study found. More than two-fifths of visits represented non-emergencies. Of those, a majority of adult respondents to a survey said it was “more convenient” to go to the emergency room or they couldn’t “get [a doctor's] appointment as soon as needed.” If universal coverage makes appointments harder to get, emergency-room use may increase.

By Pejman Yousefzadeh | Posted in Chequer-Board | Also tagged , , , , | Comments
- March 21, 2010 -

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