Senate Becomes Last Hope for American Health Care System

A few quick facts about HR 3962, the so-called "Affordable Health Care for America Act," which the House approved by a slim margin (220-215) late Saturday night:

• Number of pages: 1,990
• Weight: more than 19 pounds
• Height: 9 inches
• Cost per word: approximately $2.24 million

Those aren't the only statistics of interest, however:

• According to a Wall Street Journal op-ed, the House bill draws on 10 years of newly created taxes to pay for just six years of spending. In the second decade of the legislation's existence, deficits grow at an alarming rate.
• The newly created long-term insurance program to be operated by the federal government begins collecting premiums in 2011, but doesn't start paying benefits until 2016. Even then, the program is not self-sustaining. By 2029, it is completely insolvent, unless Congress approves another massive infusion of cash.
• After the vote Saturday night, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi compared passage of the bill to the establishment of Social Security in 1935 and Medicare in 1965. She neglected to mention that the new legislation decimates Medicare by shifting federal burdens to individual states and cutting future funding by $500 billion.
• Perhaps the most egregious provision is the section outlining consequences for not obtaining "acceptable health care coverage." For individuals who don't meet the arbitrary standards imposed by government bureaucrats, the bill would impose a tax penalty equal to the average cost of a health care plan or 2.5 percent of the individual's adjusted gross income -- whichever is greater.
• While taxpayers have to worry about those consequences, illegal immigrants don't. According to Sec. 59(b) illegals will have access to free coverage under the plan, but would be exempt from penalties for not obtaining a health insurance policy. In other words, they would enjoy all of the benefits of free health care without facing any of the financial risks borne by legal immigrants and US citizens. It's just one more reward for breaking America's immigration laws.

The good news for conservatives and other opponents of HR 3962 is that for the bill to be approved in the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid will have to have the support of all 58 Democrats and both independents. If he fails to get 60 votes, Republicans block passage with a filibuster and force Democrats to return to the bargaining table. Thankfully, Sen. Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut Democrat-turned-independent, told FOX News Sunday's Chris Wallace this weekend that he will not, under any circumstances, support a bill with a public option:

There's some good things in the House-passed plan. I think we ought to pass health care reform to deal with the two great problems President Obama and others have talked about. There are unsustainable and continuing increases in the cost of health care. We've got to stop that, and there are millions of Americans who don't have health insurance. But I'm afraid that our colleagues in the House added a lot on to that that subtract from the genuine purposes of health care reform, and one was to create a public option plan. The public option plan is unnecessary. It has been put forward, I'm convinced, by people who really want the government to take over all of health insurance. They've got a right to do that; I think that would be wrong. But worse than that, we have a problem even greater than the health insurance problems, and that is a debt. Twelve trillion dollars today, projected to be $21 trillion in 10 years. If the public option plan is in there, as a matter of conscience, I will not allow this bill to come to a final vote, because I believe debt can break America and send us into a recession that is worse than the one we're fighting our way out of today. I don't want to do that to our children and grandchildren.

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Congress Mandating That People Buy Health Insurance Like States Requiring Driver’s Licenses, Warner Says
Friday, November 13, 2009
By Nicholas Ballasy, Video Reporter


Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.)
(CNSNews.com) – Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) told CNSNews.com that the constitutional authority for Congress to require individuals to purchase health insurance is the same that allowed for Medicaid and Medicare, and for states to require driver’s licenses. He also said critics who suggest the health care bill is unconstitutional are making a “spurious argument.”

The health care bills in both the Senate and the House mandate that every American have health insurance. Back in September at a town hall meeting, Warner had also said there is “no place in the Constitution that specifically says health care” or education, but “we have made those choices as a country over the years.”

On Tuesday on Capitol Hill, CNSNews.com asked Warner, “Does the Constitution give Congress the authority to mandate whether individuals should purchase health insurance, to mandate that they have to purchase health insurance?”

Warner said: “The United States Congress passed laws regarding Medicare and Medicaid that became de facto mandatory programs. States all the time require people to have driver’s licenses. I think that this is a bit of a spurious argument that’s being made by some folks.”



“I clearly think, you know, there’s a policy decision that needs to be made but what we’ve got right now is a system where you’ve got a whole lot of folks who are basically free riders on the system who show up in emergency room doors, get treated, and get passed on to those of us who pay for private health insurance,” said Warner.

“That’s not fair or right in a normal market system,” he said. “The free-rider system that we have right now is not the market working fairly.”

In 1994, when Congress was considering a universal health care plan proposed by then-President Clinton that included a mandate that all individuals purchase health insurance, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) studied the issue and discovered that the federal government had never in the history of the United States mandated that individuals purchase any good or service.

“A mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action,” said the CBO. “The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States.”

In an analysis published this July, the CBO said that an attempt to justify a mandate that people buy health insurance by using the Commerce Clause—which gives Congress the power to regulate commerce “among the several states”—raises a “novel issue.”

“Whether such a requirement would be constitutional under the Commerce Clause is perhaps the most challenging question posed by such a proposal, as it is a novel issue whether Congress may use this clause to require an individual to purchase a good or a service,” said the CBO.

In a recent interview with CNSNews.com, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R.-Utah), a longtime member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that it was “not constitutionally sound” for Congress to mandate that individuals buy health insurance.

“But here would be the first time where our [federal] government would demand that people buy something that they may or may not want,” said Hatch.

“And, you know, if that’s the case, then we didn’t need a 'Cash for Clunkers' – all we had to do is have the federal government say you all got to buy new cars, no matter how tough it is on you. You know, they could require you to buy anything. And that isn’t America. That’s not freedom. That’s not constitutionally sound,” Hatch added.

Hatch said that if we let the federal government begin forcing us to buy things we may not want to buy without having a clear constitutional justification for doing so, “We’ve lost our freedoms, and that means the federal government can do anything it wants to do to us.”

Below is the transcript of the exchange between CNSNews.com and Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.):

CNSNews.com: “Some Republicans have argued that the health care bill is unconstitutional. Does the Constitution give Congress the authority to mandate whether individuals should purchase health insurance – to mandate that they have to purchase health insurance?”

Warner: “The United States Congress passed laws regarding Medicare and Medicaid that became de facto mandatory programs. States all the time require people to have driver’s licenses. I think that this is a bit of a spurious argument that’s being made by some folks.

“I clearly think, you know, there’s a policy decision that needs to be made but what we’ve got right now is a system where you’ve got a whole lot of folks who are basically free riders on the system who show up in emergency room doors, get treated, and get passed on to those of us who pay for private health insurance.

“That’s not fair or right in a normal market system. The free-rider system that we have right now is not the market working fairly.”

The Lemon