Thursday, January 21, 2010

The Health Care Bill is Officially Dead

From the Desk of Joe Rollins

It appears that the massive Congressional bill to reform America’s health care system is now dead as a doornail. As of Wednesday, President Obama has indicated that there are portions of the bill that he feels everyone can agree on and can be passed, which is exactly what Congress should’ve done in the first place. They simply should have passed the sections regarding no exclusions for pre-existing conditions, free transferability of insurance, and no policy maximums now and then took the time to hammer out the rest of the bill over the next few years. Most of the items that so many Americans find to be harmful and controversial will just have to wait.

I think most Americans would support reform in those particular areas of our current health care system. But to try to rush through a bill in less than one year that will totally transform one-sixth of the American economy was unwise from the beginning. Hopefully the provisions that most people actually support will now be passed and a study of the underlying problems with the rest of the bill will be performed.

You may recall that as part of the House’s bill, there was a major funding contribution to eliminate entitlement program waste. It was represented to us that there was over a half of a trillion dollars in waste and abuse in the Medicare and Medicaid programs that could be saved over the next 10 years. Now that the health care bill is officially dead, do you think we’ll see those savings and the end of waste and abuse in those entitlement programs? Stay tuned, and I’ll keep you up-to-date on the progress of these entitlement program savings...

If we could actually save some money in these entitlement programs, it would certainly be beneficial to our ballooning federal deficit (which is already setting monthly records signifying ineptitude). The federal government spends $120,000,000,000 (that’s $120 billion) a month more than it takes in, so any form of savings would be welcome. It should be clear even to the novice observer of the federal budget that this type of incredible deficit spending cannot continue.

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