Fix Health Care Policy

Now that the Supreme Court has ruled that Obamacare’s health insurance mandate is in fact a tax levied on those who do not purchase insurance, Senate Republicans will look to repeal the full law through the budget reconciliation process.

Reconciliation was used to push Obamacare through the Senate in 2009. Generally reserved strictly for budget-related measures, it eliminates the possibility of a filibuster, meaning Republicans would only need 51 votes to repeal that portion of the law – or even the full law itself.

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) seemed open to that approach during a speech at The Heritage Foundation shortly after the Supreme Court handed down its decision. The court’s ruling “does present some options for us” to pursue more unconventional options for repeal, DeMint said. He mentioned reconciliation as a potential avenue.

A senior Senate Republican aide involved in the repeal effort later confirmed to Scribe that the GOP will use the budget reconciliation process in an attempt to repeal the full law, not just the portion requiring all Americans purchase health insurance.

Read the rest on The Foundry…

Tags: budget-related measures, reconciliation, repeal Obamacare, Sen. Jim DeMint, Supreme Court ruling

Ever since Sunday’s vote to pass health care reform, the media has focused on the reconciliation vote in the Senate, analysis of how passage affects Democrats political standing, President Obama’s poll numbers—anything other than how this new law will affect the American people. However, now that Obamacare is law, it’s more important than ever to remind ourselves about the true consequences of this massive legislation and the importance of repealing it.

As Heritage Foundation President Ed Feulner says in the video: “While the Heritage Foundation recognizes that health care system requires reform, such reform cannot proceed until this intolerable act is consigned to the dustbin of history.” Watch the video to learn more.

Tags: ObamaCare, public disapproval, reconciliation, repeal, Sunday passage

The public doesn’t trust Washington politicians—and those politicians don’t trust each other. Those two truths could doom President Obama’s health care bill even if it weren’t an unaffordable behemoth.

The final health debate merges multiple story lines into one, just as March Madness does for an assortment of college basketball teams. Some of these themes are:

– The Ugliness of Today’s Washington. Trust in elected leaders is collapsing into a hole deeper than Alice ever fell into. It deepens with every disclosure of the process. “Deeming” a bill to pass; avoiding votes to avoid accountability; buying votes with taxpayers’ money, etc. “Louisiana Purchase” and “Cornhusker Kickback” are only visible symptoms of a wayward system that long ago went amok.

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Tags: Cornhusker Kickback, increased health care costs, Louisiana Purchase, public trust, reconciliation, Senate Health Bill

On the eve of the House of Representatives push to jam through the misguided and highly unpopular Senate health care bill, the President continues to try and convince the American people that the health care bill would reduce cost while showing his commitment to creating jobs and improving the economy. The raw facts make it clear that he cannot keep either of these promises. For example:

– The President claims the health care proposals would reduce health care spending. The reality is health care spending would increase. According to the latest Congressional Budget Office report of the Senate bill, health care spending under the Senate bill would increase by $210 billion over the next 10 years. This is similar to the results found by the President’s chief actuary which estimated an increase of $222 billion. While CBO predicts spending would decrease in the second decade, history shows spending rarely, if ever, goes down on government health programs. Medicare is hurtling toward a financial crisis, and Medicaid is breaking state budgets. (more…)

Tags: Medicare "donut hole", President's chief actuary, President's health proposal, reconciliation, senate health care bill

As the House of Representatives prepares for a final round of debate on the health care legislation, ordinary Americans must grasp the huge impact on the future of the country. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is pulling out all the stops to get the 216 votes needed to pass the Senate health bill, H.R. 3590 (PDF). The Speaker is also promising to fix the Senate bill’s many objectionable components later through the budget reconciliation process, parliamentary rules normally used to reconcile tax and spending provisions with the annual congressional budget resolution.

Meanwhile, the House leadership is also reportedly pursuing the controversial “Slaughter Rule,” in which the entire Senate bill be “deemed” to have passed the House without an “up or down” vote on the Senate language.

Regardless of whatever procedural shenanigans the House leadership tries to play, the end result would be enactment of the Senate health bill as the law of the land. That’s the end game. Period. (more…)

Tags: additional insurance costs, Congressional Budget Office, deem, Medicaid Expansion, reconciliation, Senate Health Bill, Slaugher Rule

Another day, another poll showing President Barack Obama’s health care plan is wildly unpopular with the American people. Yesterday NBC News/The Wall Street Journal released their latest poll showing that the percentage of Americans who believe President Obama’s health care plan is a bad idea (48%) is at the highest level since they started asking the question last year. Only 36% of Americans are willing to call the plan a “good idea” which is up a whole four points from the time when House Rules Committee Chair Louise Slaughter (D-NY) wrote this about the Senate health plan:

“[U]nder the Senate plan, millions of Americans will be forced into private insurance company plans, which will be subsidized by taxpayers. That alternative will do almost nothing to reform health care but will be a windfall for insurance companies. … Supporters of the weak Senate bill say ‘just pass it — any bill is better than no bill.’”

“I strongly disagree — a conference report is unlikely to sufficiently bridge the gap between these two very different bills. It’s time that we draw the line on this weak bill and ask the Senate to go back to the drawing board. The American people deserve at least that.”

The Senate health bill is so unpopular, even among House Democrats, that the leftist House leadership is desperately trying to trick the American people into believing that the House can pass the Senate bill without voting on it. Hence the Slaughter Rule which would deem the Senate bill passed at the same time the House would approve a new reconciliation bill. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was crystal clear on her motives this week telling a group of leftist bloggers: “It’s more insider and process-oriented than most people want to know. But I like it because people don’t have to vote on the Senate bill.” (more…)

Tags: house rules committee, ObamaCare, Public Opinion, reconciliation, senate health care bill, Slaughter Rule

According to the official site of the House Rules Committee, “questions of privilege” relate to “matters affecting the safety, dignity or integrity of the House, or the rights, reputation or conduct of a member acting as a representative.”

House leaders are poised to use a procedural tactic of questionable constitutionality to move the single most consequential piece of legislation in over seven decades through the House without a vote. Here’s the idea: (1) pass a rule to bring to the floor a “reconciliation” measure that would detoxify certain provisions in the Senate-passed health-reform bill, and (2) insert in the rule a sentence that “deems” the Senate bill to have passed the House.

As Stanford law professor and former federal appeals court judge Michael W. McConnell explained in the Wall Street Journal: (more…)

Tags: become law, Constitution, deems, house rules committee, ObamaCare, reconciliation, senate health care bill, Slaughter Rule

“Deeming” and “reconciliation” are hardly household words, but for the next week Americans will come to know them as key procedural maneuvers that could push Obamacare across the finish line. But while they might deliver a bill to President Obama’s desk, they will also make it easier to repeal the measure, says former White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove.

On the road for his “Courage and Consequence” book tour, Rove chatted with The Heritage Foundation about Obamacare, his defense of President George W. Bush’s conservatism, the growth of Tea Parties and anger toward government spending.

Listen to the full 30-minute interview.

Rove, who joined Heritage for the launch of our San Francisco Community Committee last September, recalled how even in the heart of Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) district, conservatives were teeming with energy and enthusiasm. Rove will appear at a Heritage Foundation community committee event in Naples, FL, next week.
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Tags: deeming, Karl Rove, Medicare drug benefit, ObamaCare, reconciliation, repeal, senate health care bill, tea party

In 2009, Democrats chose to proceed with a health-care bill under the regular order – that is, they sought to pass the legislation under normal House and Senate rules. They did not put together a budget reconciliation bill with health care in it, something that could have passed the Senate with a simple majority vote. They conceded that such an approach would likely produce a flawed product, as many non-budgetary provisions in a health-care plan would not survive the reconciliation process. And so they decided to try and pass a bill without resorting to reconciliation, even though they knew they would need sixty votes in the Senate to succeed. It worked. They passed a bill in the House in November, and a somewhat different version in the Senate in December.

Then came Scott Brown. His stunning election to the Senate on January 19 upended the Democrats’ end-game. They were going to work out the differences between the House and Senate-passed bills in January and proceed to pass an agreed-upon version in both chambers as expeditiously as possible. But that plan was contingent on getting sixty votes again in the Senate. With Brown’s election, Senate Republicans increased their numbers from forty to forty-one, thus forcing Democrats to find at least one Republican Senator to support their final bill. (more…)

Tags: catholic bishops, end game, ObamaCare, reconciliation, Sen. Scott Brown