Friday, September 25, 2009
Why the Rush?
By Grace-Marie Turner
Filed As: Health Care
Congressional leaders and the White House are pushing forward with their aggressive agenda to remake our health sector as though they are oblivious to the fear and outrage outside the Beltway and the pleas of the American people to put on the brakes.Only one in five Americans say their health insurance coverage and the quality of the care they receive will improve if a bill passes Congress this year. But the Senate Finance Committee nonetheless presses on, slogging its way through more than 500 amendments to the chairman's 220-page "summary" of legislation -- ("Read the bill! What bill?") No number of amendments can turn this dinosaur into a race horse. They need to start over.
The hubris is breathtaking in the decisions legislators are willing to make to order people's lives, intrude into their heath care decisions, and spend voters' and taxpayers' money for generations to come.
Why don't they stop? The best explanation I've heard is that the leadership is convinced that the reason ClintonCare led to such a huge defeat in the 1994 elections was that Congress failed to get a bill passed. If they would have just tried harder, the thinking goes, voters would not have retaliated against Democrats at the ballot box and instead would have thanked them for passing health reform.
Can they possibly be this out of touch? Inside the Beltway, anything is possible
- posted by Grace-Marie Turner
- 3:56 pm
- 0 comment
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