As the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate prepare to return to Washington in mid-January, I am preparing for the worst. I was completely, thoroughly disgusted with the behavior of the U.S. Senate as the pre-Christmas session wound down. I could not believe the last minute deal making—special breaks for a special few senators who were “holding out” on the vote for the health care reform bill.
It was bad enough to hear the news reports that Mary Landrieu of Louisiana got $300 million in extra Medicaid funding for her state. That Florida’s Bill Nelson wrangled an amendment to exclude 800,000 seniors in his state from cuts to Medicare Advantage. But the most disheartening deal was Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson, who finagled a deal that exempts his state from ever having to pay for its Medicare benefits.
I laughed when I heard ABC News’ Jonathan Karl call the deals the Louisiana Purchase, the Florida Flim-Flam, and the Cornhusker Kickback.
But then I heard the comments of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that it’s all part of the Washington game. On CNN, Reid was quoted, “If you will read the bill … you will find a number of states are treated differently than other states. That’s what legislation is all about: compromise. We worked on different things to get a number of people’s votes.”
Even worse, in the Wall Street Journal he was quoted, “I don’t know if there is a senator that doesn’t have something in this bill that was important to them…And if they don’t have something in it important to them, then it doesn’t speak well of them.”
There’s an old saying, attributed by some to Otto Von Bismarck, saying “Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.”
In this case that is the absolute truth. I am afraid to see what will happen as the House of Representatives and the Senate sit down to sort through the respective bills—according to politico.com that’s 1,990 pages for the House version; 2,074 pages for the Senate; $871 billion for the Senate bill and $1 trillion for the House bill. Add to that the goal of the Democratic leadership to get the bills consolidated and another bill passed to deliver the final bill to President Obama’s bill before his State of the Union address, I can only imagine the sausage stuffing that will take place.
I’m not opposed to health care reform. Like many other people in America, I have friends and family who have delayed medical treatment and suffered because they were unable to obtain coverage because of preexisting medical conditions or because they couldn’t afford to go for routine tests. I’ve faced the dilemma of trying to decide which bill to postpone so our family could pay the hospital or lab or doctor.
Changes do have to be made. But I don’t think change should be rushed through to meet an arbitrary political deadline.
I’m not even opposed to the “public option” although I wish I had time to peruse the thousands of pages to see just what that means. If it means government-run health care on par with that which our family received as an Army family for 20-plus years, it’s a good thing. We had wonderful doctors and nurses in a user-friendly medical system.
But on the other hand, our retirement health coverage through the government is maddeningly complicated and confusing. So just what will the public option offer?
That’s just one of the questions whose answer is hidden in the thousands of pages of the health care bills. I want our legislators to be looking for answers—not making deals.
Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose
you were a member of Congress;
but I repeat myself.
Mark Twain
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