A number of people are emailing me asking me if I have read the Baucus Bill and what I think of it. The problem is there is no real bill introduced yet. What is available is what is called the Chairman’s Mark of America’s Healthy Future Act of 2009” to be considered by the Senate Finance Committee. There is no bill number and the language in the document available is not the same as will be in the bill itself. The current document compares existing law with what the general proposals are for the bill.

            Now we have the additional problem that there are over 500 amendments to the Chairman’s Mark being proposed in the committee. However, in going over the Chairman’s Mark it looks like just more of the same. There is no public option offered like in the House Bill I read, but the Constitutional implications appear to be the same. The federal government through the Executive Branch will require everyone to buy health insurance and it won’t necessarily be the insurance an individual or family thinks is best for them.

            Senior citizens must be particularly concerned because funding to Medicare is going to be cut to help pay for the massive program and the critical Medicare Advantage will be virtually eliminated. This is a program that allows seniors to buy supplemental insurance to Medicare and many won’t be able to afford proper care if this program is eliminated. Again, the Congress is taking aim at private agreements which is in violation of its Constitutional mandates.

            The government will be regulating the entire health care industry including deciding what care has to be offered and what can be charged for it. There is no specific provision for denying care to illegal immigrants because there is no way to determine who is applying for the programs, particularly the public ones like Medicare. There is also no specific provision prohibiting the federal government from forcing insurance programs to pay for abortions or from forcing doctors or hospitals to provide abortions.

            What is significant is that efforts by Senators to insert specific language into the bill that would prevent payments for abortions and prevent illegal aliens from having free healthcare paid for by American taxpayers has been defeated. Another amendment to make sure that people could keep their current insurance was also voted down by the Democrat majority. What is even more ominous for the American people is that an effort to make sure the people in this country had a chance to read the final version of the bill before it is voted on by the committee was also defeated. The amendment simply called for the bill to be posted on the Internet for 72 hours before a vote was taken.  

There was apparently a great deal of concern about how many people have actually read HR 3200 so the majority of the Senators on the committee wanted to make sure that they weren’t bothered again by their constituents. Senator John Kerry pretty much summed up the elitist attitude many politicians have about us. He said that there was no reason to post the bill on the Internet since most of us wouldn’t understand it even if we read it. So much for transparency in government! 

I will continue to monitor the bill and learn as much as I can. However, I suspect that ultimately the legislation coming out of the Senate will be done as quietly as possible and will be very similar to that introduced in the house. Here is link to the site where you can see the Chairman’s Mark. http://thomas.loc.gov/. However, be aware that are no section numbers and what is there now will read very differently when the bill is finally introduced.

I will make one final point. Supporters of the health care legislation are claiming that Congress has the constitutional right under Article 1, Section 9 to make this massive power grab. That section of the Constitution states that Congress has the power to provide “…for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States…”