Democratic Defeat Imperils Health Care Overhaul

Scott Brown’s decisive Senate victory in Massachusetts imperiled the fate of the Democratic health care overhaul as House Democrats indicated they would not quickly approve a Senate-passed health care measure and send it to President Obama.

After a meeting of House Democratic leaders Tuesday night even as Mr. Brown’s victory was being declared, top lawmakers said they were weighing their options. But the prospect of passing the health care overhaul by pushing the Senate plan through the Houseappeared to significantly diminish.

Noting that the election in Massachusetts turned on a variety of different factors such as the economy and local issues, Representative Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland and a top party campaign strategist, acknowledged that resistance to the emerging health legislation also factored in the outcome of the Massachusetts race.

“Health care was also part of the debate and the people of Massachusetts were right to be upset about provisions in the Senate bill,” Mr. Van Hollen said, referring to “special deals” included in the bill to win the votes of Democratic senators and round up 60 votes.

The comment was a clear indication that Democrats were recalibrating their approach on health care, leaving them a diminishing and politically difficult set of choices.

Pushing the Senate plan through the House was favored by some lawmakers and strategists as a way to quickly deliver the president a bill on a signature domestic achievement, since it would require just one final House vote. Remaining problems could be worked out with a subsequent piece of legislation.

But many House Democrats expressed deep reservations about the Senate bill. Those complaints, combined with the message sent by the Massachusetts electorate, apparently were sufficient to leave Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her lieutenants reluctant by Tuesday night about moving in that direction.

The NY Times has it backwards.

The Democrat defeat in MA mitigates the peril to our Health Care.

The “Health Care Overhaul” imperils the citizenry!

Imagine the same people who brought you the Department of Education providing your health care.

And with 18,000 employees, at a cost of over tens of billions since its creation By Jimmuh Carter in 1977 as a payoff to the teachers’ unions, what does the Department of Education DO anyway?

Here’s two simple questions.

Has Public Education improved since the creation of the Department of Education?

Does any rational person believe that Health Care will improve after the Federal Government “overhauls” it?

I rest my case.

Let's be honest now... mainly because it's (HCR) not moving forward in it's current form.

The current bill has little to do with healthcare. Its chocked full of political favors, vote payoffs, promises to special groups, and God only knows how many illegal and unconstitutional mandates on the American people.

Having said that, the problem remains. We do have the greatest healthcare system in the world and now that we aren't bent on destroying it, we still need to look at how to improve it.

Healthcare insurance is brutally expensive and hampering small and large business alike. Premiums are increasing at an alarming rate every year. This is costing us jobs we need badly. I’ll argue that in the end, the money generated by all those in the chain still sustain jobs in the end, a lot of that free market profit hires people and is spent on product… so it’s not a complete travesty.

There are so many ways to address this that do not include using the insurance providers who are running at a modest profit margin as the villain, they are simply reacting to market costs. The evil is in the roots. It's the cost of HIPPA, SOx, liability insurance and all the other costs too well known to medical equ. manufacturers and healthcare facility administrators. There is an intelligent way to attack this problem, one line at a time that does not include unfair taxation and distribution of benefits to those who refuse to work or produce.

There is no reason a medical facility should have to ROI an MRI scanner over 10 years and LOSE money on it. A C-ARM machine will cost you up to 10 million freekin dollars... you know, a dang x-ray machine. I can buy plastic tubing for my lawn mower for 79 cents a foot, yet the same tubing for medical use is literally 10 times that cost.

These are the things we need to address. The ambulance chasers of our land are the enemy.

And, when this is all said and done, EVERY American should benefit using the same set of rules. The liberals failed miserably for so many reasons. The main one is that their "healthcare reform" bill didn't really have much to do with healthcare and it sure as HELL didn't reduce the cost to individual productive citizens of the US.

I could go on about this for hours. My message is that there is no “problem” with healthcare, but there are hundreds of problems that affect healthcare costs. Let’s try to address them in a way that doesn’t trample the rights of free individuals or those who are providing the services to us in the free market.

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