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House Democrats to Take Separate Vote on Senate HCR Bill
Mar 20th, 2010 | 15 responses
The Washington Post reports that House Democratic leaders say they will take a separate vote on the Senate health care bill, rejecting an earlier, much-criticized strategy that would have permitted them to “deem” the measure passed without an explicit vote.
For more details, click here.
15 Responses to “House Democrats to Take Separate Vote on Senate HCR Bill”
Well, this is really going to annoy all the Republican lawyers who have been preparing, and even posting online, lawsuits they intended to file Monday morning if the House used Pass and Deem on healthcare.
Yes, even though this process has been commonly used by Republicans “to advance their own favored policies.”
More from WaPo:
“Van Hollen said Democrats still maintain that deeming the Senate bill passed would have been appropriate and perfectly legal. But, he said, “there was no reason to allow the misinformation campaign to continue. Despite the fact that Republicans used it, we wanted to make the process absolutely clear.”
A straight vote, no procedural tricks. At least now whichever side of the debate prevails there can be no criticism about HOW it was passed or not passed.
Score one small victory for transparency.
A smart move by the Democrats, perhaps something they were planning all the time.
Makes you wonder if they have the votes so they are doing it this was or if they needed to drop D&P to get the votes.
Either way it's likely to pass
And equally likely to be blocked by lawsuits in a matter of days.
On what basis?
I have been clear in my opposition to this bill, and my deep opposition to “deem and pass”. But with “deem and pass” now rightfully off the table, I may not like it if it passes, but there is no doubt it is within the rights of Congress to pass it and for it to be law.
I refer to the fact that a number of states have indicated they will sue over the insurance mandate as soon as the bill is signed.
This is good news. . .for us that want passage, can we exhale yet?
More honorable, less underhanded or scummy. I'm all for that.
Note that it's also a likely sign of confidence that the legislation will be approved.
“a number of states have indicated they will sue over the insurance mandate”
Oh, the fun has just started.
* Employers are tempted to dump their health plans. They never have been obliged to provide or retain health plans, but having an alternative removes any “guilt” and in fact constitutes a reason for dumping.
* What happens with the individual insurance markets, and the state high risk pools, always the biggest problem with the current system and the true core area of any reform, which is mainly insurance reform?
* What happens with group (employer, government) health plans now?
* What happens with Medicaid? (Patient access is even worse than with Medicare, and more importantly, Medicaid is a huge state cost fear.)
We don't know all the details, but we do know this attempt at reform is largely like that in Massachusetts, proudly approved by Republican Mitt Romney, or like Dole and the old guard Republicans sought as an alternative to ClintonCare in the 1990s. (Lib-Dem critics have a small kernel of truth when they say that this “reform” of the Dems and the behavior of the Dems is Republican-like, even though the GOP has sought other things and has fought this as hard as anything else the Dems have tried to pass this year.)
“a number of states have indicated they will sue over the insurance mandate”
Actually, some states even are asserting their state sovereignty and authority and making payment illegal.
Federalism and state opposition to federal health care “reform” is small, but a story in and of itself.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=36121
“Thirty-four other states are weighing similar legislation to block the individual mandate, which is an element of bills that have passed both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. But Virginia is the first state to complete legislative action on such a bill. Proponents of the legislation clearly are intent on sending a message to Washington, stressing the point that the federal government should not force private citizens to enter into private contracts for insurance.”
“This action by the state comes on the heels of Virginia's lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency(EPA) challenging that bodies right to regulate carbon emissions. …”
http://www.examiner.com/x-40575-Prince-William-…
(I don't mind seeing the states assert themselves when and where they should, including against what is not just overreach by the federal government, but pure ideology and politics, not “science” but the most zealous religion currently in existence in the West — with Inquisitors to suppress dissent to it, and them.)
Some quick notes on this deem mess. For the Democrats, accusing a fellow politician of hypocrisy is not going to grab much attention, it's like accusing them of breathing. It's just what comes naturally.
And for the Republicans, most of the people in the country could care less what procedures are used to pass this or any bill. And I don't think there is much chance the courts would throw out the bill because of the use of the deem procedure. In general separation of powers means the courts wouldn't interfere with the internal procedures of another branch.
With this Supreme Court it's not certain that the individual mandate would be upheld. The 5 conservative justices have made a few dents in the federal interstate commerce authority. And they haven't been shy about making purely political decisions. Of course, they will need Kennedy to do it and it looks like Obama will get to replace him, if not this year then in the next two.
Patrick,
A reasoned view if one steps back with the legal opposition states may have to the individual mandate is that it is not (fully) funded, not that it necessarily is encroachment into state and local affairs by being an improper direct federal law compelling certain individual behavior. (Citizens may be told to do or not to do quite a lot by the federal government, in practice. Note that the current Chicago gun control case has potential general scope, which may include deciding insurance mandates like this, legally.)
The states might be able to insist that the feds be honest and fully pay for what they want, which means in practice ensuring subsidies are high enough that the insurance is truly (easily) affordable. (Yes, that does introduce a huge cost that the Dems have “neglected,” but that is as unsurprising as any other examples.)
Smarter libs realize that is an opportunity to move the direct-federal interventionist “ratchet” more notches.
“can we exhale yet?”
Not until all the votes are done, but you can exhale a bit after tomorrow, when Pelosi gets to be on the air (courtesy of the liberal media, pre-empting other programming) and say to all, “the bill is PASSED” and rap her gavel.
It is more than a small kernel of truth. It's also similar to Nixon's proposal in the early 70's. In fact I think this is the reason Obama thought he would gain Republican votes for the bill. It is a measure of how far to the right the Republican party and the country as a whole has moved in the last thirty years that a largely traditional Republican proposal is now considered ’Lib-Dem’, which I assume means Liberal Democratic.
One could argue that philosophically the current proposal is not all that far from the Republican's 401k’ization of health care proposal McCain used in the 2008 campaign and which was the Senate Republican's health care proposal before then. That proposal used tax code changes to extend health care to fewer people who currently don't have it at a greater unfunded cost to the federal government than the current bill. In the Republicans' defense the purpose of their bill wasn't to increase coverage but to allow companies to drop their health care coverage while letting them keep the money they had been spending on it, similar to what the 401k provisions did for pensions in the 1980's. And of course, to make sure high income earners benefited from the reform, always a priority for the Republicans.
But it did establish that the Republicans accepted that the federal government should spend large amounts of money for health care. That it was alright to increase the national debt to do it, just as they did for Medicare type D drug coverage and Medicare Advantage. I assume this is what you mean by “even though the GOP has sought other things”.
The greatest weakness of the current bill actually is one of its Republican aspects, one also in the McCain proposal. That was that this would be done using private, for profit companies. What this means is that the best hope is for a bending down of the cost curve instead of cutting into the administrative fat of the for profit companies that makes ours the most expensive health care in the world. We accepted the Republican's call for a uniquely American system when we can see that every other Western democracy has found a system delivering affordable universal health care to their citizens at an average cost of half of the United States' cost by not relying so heavily on the for profit companies. .
Does this mean that we should always use private enterprise to provide social needs even when they are really inefficient at doing it? We have established with the current health care reform that we will when the cost is twice as much. Republicans are quick to call any government mandated expense a 'tax'. When will they or any of the Democrats supporting this bill explain why we have to pay this 100% 'tax' on health care?
“It is more than a small kernel of truth.”
Not much more than that, in fact. What we have seen all year is overreach by the Dems, and they sought too much initially with health care “reform” as well, but entangeled themselves with this, and finally have been able to do something, by greatly scaling down what they originally attempted. There is some “Republican-like” claim that can be made, but it happens to be coincidental in this case.
“The greatest weakness of the current bill actually is one of its Republican aspects, one also in the McCain proposal. That was that this would be done using private, for profit companies.”
The business-bashing I'm hearing from the far Left is wasted. It's inappropriate; retaining the private sector is of course the thing to do currently, because true reform is limited to the insurance markets, and the Dems were long overdue in limiting what they sought with the final legislation. The public (mainstream, anyway) would not accept abrupt change to public no-profit “single-payer” care, especially if these Dems, with their past record of overreach, were the ones to try it. (One reason the Dems imploded was that they rightfully feared for the re-election prospects by doing too much the public didn't want this past year.)
“Does this mean that we should always use private enterprise to provide social needs even when they are really inefficient at doing it? “
Who says anything and everything are “social needs”? That is a mistaken presumption.
“When will they or any of the Democrats supporting this bill explain why we have to pay this 100% 'tax' on health care? “
This is where the far Left totally misses things because it's above them intellectually. (Having this huge incrementalist takeover success eludes many of them because they too busy being upset at not getting exactly or more of what they wanted.) Having everyone participate in this “regulated” scheme gets everyone paying into the system and used to this, just as they would need to under a largely or fully tax-funded, Medicare for All scheme. Making everyone pay and play is the key.