I think your recollection is correct. This is a common strategy to get around the provision that all revenue measures must originate in the House. It is a transparent fraud, but apparently legal.
It isn’t legal, but you can get away with it if federal judges participate in the fraud.
“This is a common strategy to get around the provision that all revenue measures must originate in the House.”
“The PPACA was a substitute amendment for HR 3590, which originated in the House as a bill to provide first-time homebuyer’s credits for members of the armed forces. The PPACA is an amalgam created by the Senate leadership from separate bills prepared by the Senate Finance and Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, supplemented by a nearly 400 page long manager’s amendment adopted on the floor. The provisions of the manager’s amendment, which made substantial changes in the underlying bill, were not integrated into the bill, but rather added to the end of the nine-title bill as title X. One must, therefore, read the text of the legislation with the manager’s amendment in hand, as many of the provisions that still appear in the bill were eliminated or substantially changed by the manager’s amendment. The provisions of the PPACA were also, of course, further amended by the reconciliation act.”
http://www.lexisnexis.com/COMMUNITY/EMERGINGISSUES/blogs/spotlightonhealthcarereform/archive/2010/09/13/introduction-to-the-patient-protection-and-affordable-care-act-and-the-health-care-ppaca-and-education-reconciliation-act-of-2010.aspx
Such is the convoluted process by which legislation is made under the most transparent administration in history. Remember the promise that the text of all bills would be put on-line for all the public to see at least FIVE DAYS before passage? This didn’t happen for the Senate version, the Senate reconciliation bill or the House-passed reconciliation bill. Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and company were way too eager to pass the bill so we all could find out what was in it.