I wouldn’t pretend to understand what it all means, but if you watched the news shows coming out of the USA last night,  you heard that the US Congress passed the health reform legislation that has been the subject of intense debate for what seems like forever.

The majority of Democrats were ecstatic and claim that this is an historic step forward for the country.  Republicans, on the other hand, make it sound like the USA is “on the eve of destruction”.

Here’s what Fox News reports:

A bloc of pro-life Democrats turned out to be the linchpin to passage of the Senate’s massive health insurance overhaul Sunday night, as President Obama cemented a 219-212 victory with a pledge to issue an executive order “clarifying” abortion language in the Senate bill.

Health care reform legislation a year in the making heads to President Obama’s desk after Democrats cemented a narrow victory Sunday night on the heels of an intense week of arm-twisting and deal-making.

A bloc of pro-life Democrats turned out to be the linchpin to passage of the Senate’s massive health insurance overhaul, as Obama sealed a 219-212 victory with a pledge to issue an executive order “clarifying” abortion language in the Senate bill.

The House also voted 220-211 to support a “reconciliation” bill aimed to “fix” provisions in the Senate bill that many House Democrats opposed but viewed as better than nothing.

“The United States Congress finally declared that America’s workers and America’s families and small businesses deserve the security of knowing that here in this country neither illness nor accident should endanger the dreams they worked a lifetime to achieve,” Obama said in the East Room of the White House as Vice President Joe Biden stood beside him.

“We proved that this government, a government of the people and by the people, still works for the people,” he said. “I know this wasn’t an easy vote for a lot of people but it was the right vote.

“This isn’t radical reform, but it is major reform. This is what change looks like,” Obama added.

Thirty-four Democrats voted against the Senate bill, whose passage turned out to be incumbent upon the president satisfying pro-life Democrats like Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., who insisted on stronger restrictions on abortion than the Senate’s bill.

The Senate bill allows insurance companies who participate in a planned government-run exchange to provide abortions but attempts to create separate accounts for those using federal subsidies who might seek abortion services.

Stupak had claimed he had at least seven votes with him against the Senate bill. They turned out to be more than enough to make or break the bill. On Sunday afternoon, he said the president’s promise of an executive order was enough to win over the group, even though pro-choice groups slammed Obama as a sell-out to their cause and pro-life groups said the order would change nothing in the Senate bill.

Republicans too called the executive order a toothless regulation that does not have the force of law and can easily be overturned with a strike of the pen.

After the vote for passage, GOP lawmakers sought to send the Senate bill back to the House committee with language asking for additional protections against tax-funded abortions like those successfully proposed by Stupak in the House legislation that passed in November.

The president’s executive order does “absolutely nothing to mitigate or change” in any way the Senate’s provisions on abortion accounts, said Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J.

But Stupak, who was greeted with shouts of “baby killer,” responded that Republicans were merely trying to kill the bill, not save lives.

“The motion is really a last-ditch effort of 98 years of denying Americans health care,” Stupak said. “It is the Democrats who have stood up for the principal of no public funding of abortions. It is Democrats through the president’s executive order that ensure the sanctity of life is protected.”

House leaders on both sides of the aisle gave impassioned pleas before the final vote Sunday night, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi praising Obama’s leadership and House Minority Leader John Boehner warning congressional members against defying the will of the American people.

Clearly angered by the impending vote, Boehner shouted at lawmakers that they can not go back to their constituents and claim to have read the bill, saved money, created jobs or acted openly in their pursuit of the legislation.

Saying the actions taken by the House to get the bill passed discredits the Congress, Boehner, R-Ohio, slowly raised his voice as he demanded lawmakers answer simple questions.

“Can you go home and tell your senior citizens that these cuts in Medicare will not limit their access to doctors or further weaken the program instead of strengthening it? No, you can not,” Boehner said to shouts of support from his GOP caucus. “And look at how this bill was written. Can you say it was done openly, with transparency and accountability without backroom deals struck behind closed doors, hidden from the people? Hell, no you can’t.”

Boehner warned lawmakers that they will have to face the music if they vote for the legislation.

“In a democracy you can only defy the will of the people for so long and get away with it,” he said.

Despite his dire warnings, Boehner was followed by Pelosi, who earned an equally passionate response from her Democratic colleagues.

“We all know, and it’s been said over and over again, that our economy needs something, a jolt and I believe that this legislation will unleash tremendous entrepreneurial power to our economy,”Pelosi said. “Imagine a society and an economy where a person could change jobs without losing health insurance, where they could be self-employed or start a small business. Imagine an economy where people could follow their passions or their talent and without having to worry that their children would not have health insurance.”

Pelosi pledged the new legislation would create hundreds of thousands of jobs and save $1.2 trillion in its second 10 years, numbers predicated on unlikely scenarios, including Congress’ withholding its authority to make discretionary spending changes to the bill and future Medicare savings.

But Pelosi said when it comes to health care, all politics is personal for Americans, including those who are denied coverage for illnesses they already have when they try to sign up for insurance.

“It’s personal for millions of families that have gone into bankruptcy under the weight of rising health care costs. Many, many, many, a high number percentage of the bankruptcies in our country are caused by medical bills that people can not pay,” Pelosi said.

“Being a woman will no longer be a pre-existing medical condition,” she added.

After the vote, Democratic leaders spoke to the press. Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., the majority whip, called Pelosi the most “tenacious” person he’d ever met. He added that the bill is “a giant step toward the establishment of a more perfect union.”

“I consider this to be the civil rights act of the 21st century because I do believe this is the one fundamental right that this country has been wrestling with now for almost 100 years,” Clyburn said.

Earlier, the House voted 224-206 to approve the rules for debating the Senate bill. House Republicans did all they could to slow the increasingly inevitable march toward the overhaul and were joined by 28 Democrats who voted with Republicans against the rule for debate.

Once the fixes bill goes back to the Senate, lawmakers were expected to approve a series of “fixes” aimed at getting rid of special deals for some districts and states, including the “cornhusker kickback” for Nebraska and others made to win Senate support.

Obama will have to sign the Senate bill into law before any fixes bill goes to the Senate under rules designed to enable Democrats to pass the bill with 51 votes, thus avoiding a Republican filibuster. Democrats control 59 of the Senate’s 100 seats, one vote shy of the number needed to overcome bill-killing filibusters from a united GOP.

But senators have given no guarantees they will pass the fixes, which are strictly the wishes of House Democrats.

Any reconciliation package that does get sent to the Senate is facing a block — or at least a delay — from Senate Republicans who will try to use “hundreds” of amendments to stop the fixes.

“We’re not going to try to drag this out forever with amendments, but I do think it’s important to try to amend some portions of the bill and at least use the amendment process to demonstrate to the American people some of the things that are still wrong with this bill,” said Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz.

Much may hinge on the judgments of an unelected figure, Senate Parliamentarian Allan Frumin, who will enforce the so-called “Byrd rule,” named after the Democratic senator from West Virginia. The rule holds that any provisions in a reconciliation bill that do not firstly and chiefly affect the budget must be stricken from the measures.

“There are some provisions that have — clearly, (the Congressional Budget Office) has scored as having zero or no budgetary consequence,” said Bill Hoagland, a one-time aide to former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn. “They’re not important, they’re not significant in the grand scheme of things. But just to have one would be enough to create the point of order and, if sustained by the chair, would create this situation where it would have to go back to the House again.”

Of course, the parliamentarian’s rulings are not the final word in the Senate. That authority belongs to the president of the Senate, currently Vice President Joe Biden.

Leading Democrats hinted on Sunday that they may invoke Biden’s authority to shut down the GOP.

“We’re going to deal with honest amendments on substance that meet the test of the Senate rules,” Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “But there is going to come a point when the American people and the people in the Senate are going to say this really isn’t about substance, it’s all about politics. Now let’s make a final decision, up or down vote.”

Republicans may also argue that select provisions of the bill impact Social Security, and if that argument carries the day, it would, under Senate rules, effectively kill the bill.

A bloc of pro-life Democrats turned out to be the linchpin to passage of the Senate’s massive health insurance overhaul Sunday night, as President Obama cemented a 219-212 victory with a pledge to issue an executive order “clarifying” abortion language in the Senate bill.

Health care reform legislation a year in the making heads to President Obama’s desk after Democrats cemented a narrow victory Sunday night on the heels of an intense week of arm-twisting and deal-making.

A bloc of pro-life Democrats turned out to be the linchpin to passage of the Senate’s massive health insurance overhaul, as Obama sealed a 219-212 victory with a pledge to issue an executive order “clarifying” abortion language in the Senate bill.

The House also voted 220-211 to support a “reconciliation” bill aimed to “fix” provisions in the Senate bill that many House Democrats opposed but viewed as better than nothing.

The Senate was scheduled to begin debate on those “fixes” on Tuesday, the earliest day that Obama would sign the original legislation.

The president delivered a statement after the vote, calling the “reform” the “right thing to do” for families, seniors, businesses, workers and the future and “another stone firmly laid in the foundation of the American dream.”

Sunday: President Obama, with Vice President Biden, makes a statement to the nation following the final vote in the House of Representatives on a health insurance overhaul. (AP Photo)

“The United States Congress finally declared that America’s workers and America’s families and small businesses deserve the security of knowing that here in this country neither illness nor accident should endanger the dreams they worked a lifetime to achieve,” Obama said in the East Room of the White House as Vice President Joe Biden stood beside him.

“We proved that this government, a government of the people and by the people, still works for the people,” he said. “I know this wasn’t an easy vote for a lot of people but it was the right vote.

“This isn’t radical reform, but it is major reform. This is what change looks like,” Obama added.

Thirty-four Democrats voted against the Senate bill, whose passage turned out to be incumbent upon the president satisfying pro-life Democrats like Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., who insisted on stronger restrictions on abortion than the Senate’s bill.

The Senate bill allows insurance companies who participate in a planned government-run exchange to provide abortions but attempts to create separate accounts for those using federal subsidies who might seek abortion services.

Stupak had claimed he had at least seven votes with him against the Senate bill. They turned out to be more than enough to make or break the bill. On Sunday afternoon, he said the president’s promise of an executive order was enough to win over the group, even though pro-choice groups slammed Obama as a sell-out to their cause and pro-life groups said the order would change nothing in the Senate bill.

Republicans too called the executive order a toothless regulation that does not have the force of law and can easily be overturned with a strike of the pen.

After the vote for passage, GOP lawmakers sought to send the Senate bill back to the House committee with language asking for additional protections against tax-funded abortions like those successfully proposed by Stupak in the House legislation that passed in November.

The president’s executive order does “absolutely nothing to mitigate or change” in any way the Senate’s provisions on abortion accounts, said Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J.

But Stupak, who was greeted with shouts of “baby killer,” responded that Republicans were merely trying to kill the bill, not save lives.

“The motion is really a last-ditch effort of 98 years of denying Americans health care,” Stupak said. “It is the Democrats who have stood up for the principal of no public funding of abortions. It is Democrats through the president’s executive order that ensure the sanctity of life is protected.”

House leaders on both sides of the aisle gave impassioned pleas before the final vote Sunday night, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi praising Obama’s leadership and House Minority Leader John Boehner warning congressional members against defying the will of the American people.

Clearly angered by the impending vote, Boehner shouted at lawmakers that they can not go back to their constituents and claim to have read the bill, saved money, created jobs or acted openly in their pursuit of the legislation.

Saying the actions taken by the House to get the bill passed discredits the Congress, Boehner, R-Ohio, slowly raised his voice as he demanded lawmakers answer simple questions.

“Can you go home and tell your senior citizens that these cuts in Medicare will not limit their access to doctors or further weaken the program instead of strengthening it? No, you can not,” Boehner said to shouts of support from his GOP caucus. “And look at how this bill was written. Can you say it was done openly, with transparency and accountability without backroom deals struck behind closed doors, hidden from the people? Hell, no you can’t.”

Boehner warned lawmakers that they will have to face the music if they vote for the legislation.

“In a democracy you can only defy the will of the people for so long and get away with it,” he said.

Despite his dire warnings, Boehner was followed by Pelosi, who earned an equally passionate response from her Democratic colleagues.

“We all know, and it’s been said over and over again, that our economy needs something, a jolt and I believe that this legislation will unleash tremendous entrepreneurial power to our economy,”Pelosi said. “Imagine a society and an economy where a person could change jobs without losing health insurance, where they could be self-employed or start a small business. Imagine an economy where people could follow their passions or their talent and without having to worry that their children would not have health insurance.”

Pelosi pledged the new legislation would create hundreds of thousands of jobs and save $1.2 trillion in its second 10 years, numbers predicated on unlikely scenarios, including Congress’ withholding its authority to make discretionary spending changes to the bill and future Medicare savings.

But Pelosi said when it comes to health care, all politics is personal for Americans, including those who are denied coverage for illnesses they already have when they try to sign up for insurance.

“It’s personal for millions of families that have gone into bankruptcy under the weight of rising health care costs. Many, many, many, a high number percentage of the bankruptcies in our country are caused by medical bills that people can not pay,” Pelosi said.

“Being a woman will no longer be a pre-existing medical condition,” she added.

After the vote, Democratic leaders spoke to the press. Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., the majority whip, called Pelosi the most “tenacious” person he’d ever met. He added that the bill is “a giant step toward the establishment of a more perfect union.”

“I consider this to be the civil rights act of the 21st century because I do believe this is the one fundamental right that this country has been wrestling with now for almost 100 years,” Clyburn said.

Earlier, the House voted 224-206 to approve the rules for debating the Senate bill. House Republicans did all they could to slow the increasingly inevitable march toward the overhaul and were joined by 28 Democrats who voted with Republicans against the rule for debate.

Once the fixes bill goes back to the Senate, lawmakers were expected to approve a series of “fixes” aimed at getting rid of special deals for some districts and states, including the “cornhusker kickback” for Nebraska and others made to win Senate support.

Obama will have to sign the Senate bill into law before any fixes bill goes to the Senate under rules designed to enable Democrats to pass the bill with 51 votes, thus avoiding a Republican filibuster. Democrats control 59 of the Senate’s 100 seats, one vote shy of the number needed to overcome bill-killing filibusters from a united GOP.

But senators have given no guarantees they will pass the fixes, which are strictly the wishes of House Democrats.

Any reconciliation package that does get sent to the Senate is facing a block — or at least a delay — from Senate Republicans who will try to use “hundreds” of amendments to stop the fixes.

“We’re not going to try to drag this out forever with amendments, but I do think it’s important to try to amend some portions of the bill and at least use the amendment process to demonstrate to the American people some of the things that are still wrong with this bill,” said Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz.

Much may hinge on the judgments of an unelected figure, Senate Parliamentarian Allan Frumin, who will enforce the so-called “Byrd rule,” named after the Democratic senator from West Virginia. The rule holds that any provisions in a reconciliation bill that do not firstly and chiefly affect the budget must be stricken from the measures.

“There are some provisions that have — clearly, (the Congressional Budget Office) has scored as having zero or no budgetary consequence,” said Bill Hoagland, a one-time aide to former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn.

“They’re not important, they’re not significant in the grand scheme of things. But just to have one would be enough to create the point of order and, if sustained by the chair, would create this situation where it would have to go back to the House again.”

Of course, the parliamentarian’s rulings are not the final word in the Senate. That authority belongs to the president of the Senate, currently Vice President Joe Biden.

Leading Democrats hinted on Sunday that they may invoke Biden’s authority to shut down the GOP.

“We’re going to deal with honest amendments on substance that meet the test of the Senate rules,” Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “But there is going to come a point when the American people and the people in the Senate are going to say this really isn’t about substance, it’s all about politics. Now let’s make a final decision, up or down vote.”

Republicans may also argue that select provisions of the bill impact Social Security, and if that argument carries the day, it would, under Senate rules, effectively kill the bill.

The Senate was scheduled to begin debate on those “fixes” on Tuesday, the earliest day that Obama would sign the original legislation.The president delivered a statement after the vote, calling the “reform” the “right thing to do” for families, seniors, businesses, workers and the future and “another stone firmly laid in the foundation of the American dream.”

Despite the Democrats’ celebrations, last night, it sounds to me like the bill has a long way to go before it actually becomes law.

CNN agrees:

Now that the House has passed the Senate’s health care reform bill and a package meant to reconcile differences between the House and Senate bills, the next step is for members of the Senate to sign off on those changes.

That won’t be as easy as it sounds.

Senate Republicans have indicated they will use any and all legislative tactics in order to slow — even stop — the reconciliation bill from passing.

President Obama is expected to sign the health care bill Tuesday at the earliest. Only then can the Senate begin dealing with the reconciliation package.

According to Senate rules, members are allowed to offer unlimited amendments and challenges to the reconciled bill.

“There’s hope that [the vote] would be done within a short period of time, like a week or so,” said Tim McBride, a health economist and associate dean of public health at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. “But the Senate is complicated and doesn’t have the discipline that the House does.”

Once the bill hits the Senate floor, reconciliation rules stipulate that there must be 20 hours of debate.

But that 20 hours is more of a suggestion than an indicator of what will happen, because Republicans are allowed to offer unlimited amendments and are geared up to offer many, all of which must be ruled on by the Senate parliamentarian.

“It could get all messy and could go on forever if they threw up amendment after amendment,” said Cheryl Block, a law professor at Washington University’s School of Law. “Theoretically, it should only take 20 hours, but it will likely take longer because Republicans have things up their sleeve.”

Senate Democrats, though, do have an option to overrule the parliamentarian’s decision; but they would need Republican votes to reach the necessary three-quarters majority required to do that, and that’s unlikely in the highly polarized Senate.

Meanwhile, if a provision in the reconciled package is struck down, the bill would then have to go back to the House for another vote.

House Democratic leaders are hopeful they will have enough support in the Senate to stop Republicans’ attempts to block the legislation. All they need is a simply majority of 51 votes. If needed, Vice President Joe Biden, who serves as president of the Senate, could cast a tie-breaking vote.

Ahead of Sunday’s vote, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she was confident the reconciled bill would receive the Senate’s backing.

She said that when her members go to vote, they will have “all of the assurance they need” that the reconciliation package will be passed in the Senate.

“When we bring the bill to the floor, we will have a significant victory for the American people,” Pelosi added.

House Minority Leader John Boehner, however, argued Friday that the vote was “pretty tight.”

Boehner had said the revised health care bill was worse than the original legislation, adding that the “American people are going to hear about every payoff, every kickback and every sweetheart deal that comes out.”

If the bill makes it through the legislative process, it will then have to run the judicial “gauntlet”.  Many attorneys and legal scholars believe that the bill is unconstitutional.

Michael R. Connelly, a former US Army officer and Louisiana attorney, and now constitutional law professor, has said the following:

Well, I have done it! I have read the entire text of proposed House Bill 3200: The Affordable Health Care Choices Act of 2009. I studied it with particular emphasis from my area of expertise, constitutional law. I was frankly concerned that parts of the proposed law that were being discussed might be unconstitutional. What I found was far worse than what I had heard or expected.

To begin with, much of what has been said about the law and its implications is in fact true, despite what the Democrats and the media are saying. The law does provide for rationing of health care, particularly where senior citizens and other classes of citizens are involved, free health care for illegal immigrants, free abortion services, and probably forced participation in abortions by members of the medical profession.

The Bill will also eventually force private insurance companies out of business and put everyone into a government run system. All decisions about personal health care will ultimately be made by federal bureaucrats and most of them will not be health care professionals. Hospital admissions, payments to physicians, and allocations of necessary medical devices will be strictly controlled.

However, as scary as all of that is, it just scratches the surface. In fact, I have concluded that this legislation really has no intention of providing affordable health care choices. Instead it is a convenient cover for the most massive transfer of power to the Executive Branch of government that has ever occurred, or even been contemplated. If this law or a similar one is adopted, major portions of the Constitution of the United States will effectively have been destroyed.

The first thing to go will be the masterfully crafted balance of power between the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of the U.S. Government. The Congress will be transferring to the Obama Administration authority in a number of different areas over the lives of the American people and the businesses they own. The irony is that the Congress doesn’t have any authority to legislate in most of those areas to begin with. I defy anyone to read the text of the U.S. Constitution and find any authority granted to the members of Congress to regulate health care.

This legislation also provides for access by the appointees of the Obama administration of all of your personal healthcare information, your personal financial information, and the information of your employer, physician, and hospital. All of this is a direct violation of the specific provisions of the 4th Amendment to the Constitution protecting against unreasonable searches and seizures. You can also forget about the right to privacy. That will have been legislated into oblivion regardless of what the 3rd and 4th Amendments may provide.

If you decide not to have healthcare insurance or if you have private insurance that is not deemed “acceptable” to the “Health Choices Administrator” appointed by Obama there will be a tax imposed on you. It is called a “tax” instead of a fine because of the intent to avoid application of the due process clause of the 5th Amendment. However, that doesn’t work because since there is nothing in the law that allows you to contest or appeal the imposition of the tax, it is definitely depriving someone of property without the “due process of law.

So, there are three of those pesky amendments that the far left hate so much out the original ten in the Bill of Rights that are effectively nullified by this law. It doesn’t stop there though. The 9th Amendment that provides: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people;” The 10th Amendment states: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are preserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Under the provisions of this piece of Congressional handiwork neither the people nor the states are going to have any rights or powers at all in many areas that once were theirs to control.

I could write many more pages about this legislation, but I think you get the idea. This is not about health care; it is about seizing power and limiting rights. Article 6 of the Constitution requires the members of both houses of Congress to “be bound by oath or affirmation” to support the Constitution. If I was a member of Congress I would not be able to vote for this legislation or anything like it without feeling I was violating that sacred oath or affirmation. If I voted for it anyway I would hope the American people would hold me accountable.

For those who might doubt the nature of this threat I suggest they consult the source. Here is a link to the Constitution:

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html

And another to the Bill of Rights:

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/bill_of_rights_transcript.htm

There you can see exactly what we are about to have taken from us.

That some provisions of the health care reform legislation are unconstitutional is an opinion that has been expressed by others.  For example, Orrin Hatch, J. Kenneth Blackwell and Kenneth A Klukowski argued the same, in a Wall Street Journal editorial.  (Mr. Hatch, a Republican senator from Utah, is a former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Mr. Blackwell is a senior fellow with the Family Research Council and a professor at Liberty University School of Law. Mr. Klukowski is a fellow and senior legal analyst with the American Civil Rights Union).

President Obama’s health-care bill is now moving toward final passage. The policy issues may be coming to an end, but the legal issues are certain to continue because key provisions of this dangerous legislation are unconstitutional. Legally speaking, this legislation creates a target-rich environment. We will focus on three of its more glaring constitutional defects.

In an editorial in the Los Angeles Times, Professor Amar said that “Constitutional objections to Obamacare don’t hold up” and that “[t]he federal government has clear authority to regulate interstate commerce, levy taxes and protect human rights, all part of the proposed healthcare overhaul”.

Critics of Obamacare are now upping the ante, claiming that its basic outlines are not just unwise but unconstitutional. I’m no healthcare expert, but I have spent the last three decades studying the Constitution, and the current plan easily passes constitutional muster.

Akhil Reed Amar

Federal regulation makes obvious sense if the interstate or international issue involves trade or navigation. But the founders authorized Congress to act even in situations that did not involve explicit markets, so long as the activities truly crossed state lines or national borders. Today, that power properly extends to regulating such things as air pollution that wafts across state lines or endangered species that migrate across borders. In line with this broad understanding, George Washington signed a law preventing Americans from committing even non-economic crimes on Indian lands because such activities did indeed involve “commerce . . . with the Indian tribes.”

The healthcare bill clearly addresses activities that cross state lines. These activities are often economic in nature. Currently, workers with preexisting medical conditions may be unable to accept job offers originating in another state — a reality that clogs the free interstate flow of goods and services. Other Americans relocate to states with better public health benefits, creating interstate races to the bottom as states worry about becoming “welfare magnets.” Some grandparents now refrain from visiting their out-of-state grandchildren because of anxieties about out-of-network healthcare delivery systems. Obamacare addresses all of these matters of interstate commerce.

The founders’ Constitution also gave Congress sweeping power to impose all sorts of taxes. The slogan of those at the Boston Tea Party in 1773 was “no taxation without representation” — Parliament should not tax Americans because Parliament did not represent Americans. But after independence, the founders created a representative Congress with explicit authority to tax Americans up, down and sideways.

I’ve been working at The Star-News going on four years now and during that time only had to use my health insurance three times.

The first time — and I promise I’m not making this up — I had to go to the doctor because I slipped and fell in some peach juice.

I think it was my middle child who spilt the cotton-picking things and didn’t tell anyone. There were no sign of the sweet orbs on the floor but I knew it was peaches — especially considering the fact that when my feet came out from underneath me and head hit the floor, the sticky aroma exploded as the droplets from the puddle landed on my face.

I thought I broke my foot. Turns out it was only a sprain. That trip to the doctor and x-ray cost me $200, with my insurance, which without naming companies, is of the blue variety.

Second time, a spider bit me. Got the scar to prove it.

That trip wasn’t as hard on my pocketbook as it was on my arm. A couple of antibiotics, a cream and one co-pay later, I was out the door for less than $60.

This last trip, however, I’m still waiting to see the bill for it — was for the dreaded “F” word. Cost me $35 just to see the doctor, plus who knows what for the Q-tip up the nose and the drugs? Let’s just say, “Wow.”

If the average person like me spends an estimated $200 a year for health care treatment alone, what would universal health care mean to me?

I think the answer in my case, and others who are in their 20s to their late 30s, would be pretty simple — universal health care, from what I understand as it’s proposed, would be a viable solution.

On the flip side, we have those who require extensive, specialized and long-term health care. If I had to put a price tag what it has cost in the last six years for one of my children, I would have to quit after the Lear jet ride from Pensacola, Fla., to Birmingham and the two-month stay in the neonatal intensive care unit — especially considering that was all before she was 6 months old.

For those who require that extensive, specialized long-term health care, what would a government operated universal health care system mean?

Would it mean not having our elderly population chose between groceries or medicine or would it mean Uncle Sam telling me that my daughter’s future isn’t an economic investment he’s willing to make or one he’s willing to make up to a certain point?

The answer is, “I don’t know” and I’m willing to bet that no one else — including the president or the countless lawyers it took to draft that humongous bill — know either.

So where does that leave us?

Right where we started from — paying out of pocket for health insurance premiums, praying to the good Lord above no one gets sick and wondering how the whole kit and caboodle affects me.

If you listen to radio and television personality Rush Limbaugh, the legislation will be “a disaster” for the American people:

Rush Limbaugh

And as I mentioned yesterday, take a look at Walgreens in the state of Washington, they are not accepting any new Medicaid patients starting April 16th.  I mean that’s the future.  There are increases in the employer penalties for not complying with the mandates which will hit all businesses with more than 50 employees.  It’s deadly.  Now, what’s in the Senate bill?  What’s in the Senate?  The Senate Democrats’ health bill cuts Medicare by $463 billion.  And, by the way, folks, you should know this.  Steny Hoyer has sent a memo to all Democrats in the House:  ”Do not get into a discussion about specifics of the CBO report.  Do not get into specifics.”  The reason is, if they get into specifics they’re going to have to admit that everything they’re saying is untrue about how much it costs and how much premiums are going down and how much the deficit’s going down because none of that’s true.  Hoyer is printing out a memo to staff members to tell their leaders and members of Congress, do not get into a debate with anybody about what’s in the CBO report, just focus on deficit reduction.

In other words, Hoyer sent a memo out to his members saying: “Just lie, just lie, and say this reduces the deficit but get into no specifics.  You keep walking, you don’t stop, and you do not get into a detailed discussion of CBO numbers.”  They don’t want a detailed discussion of any of the details here.  They lose if that happens.  They don’t want it, and that’s why people are focusing on these details today.  The sum total of Medicare cuts in the Senate bill is $523.5 billion dollars.  That’s the total and that’s what will pass.  The Senate bill will be separated if they vote on this reconciliation thing Sunday, it will be sent over to the Senate to be certified there, then on to Obama.  The reconciliation package will not be part of it.  The reconciliation package may never see the light of day.  Here are the way the cuts break down: $202.3 billion in cuts to seniors Medicare health plans including massive cuts targeting the extra benefits and reduced cost sharing that seniors receive through Medicare Advantage; $156.6 billion in cuts to inpatient and outpatient hospital services, inpatient rehab facilities, long-term care hospitals.  Folks, there’s no expanded care anywhere, especially for you seasoned citizens.  There are massive cuts.  And this $523 billion is being taken away from Medicare and is being spent elsewhere.  They’re taking it away from senior citizens, spending it elsewhere in the new entitlement.  This is in the Senate bill, not this reconciliation stuff, what has been passed last Christmas Eve in the Senate.

Thirty-nine point seven billion in cuts to home health reimbursements; $22.1 billion in additional cuts to hospitals by slashing reimbursements designed to assist hospitals that serve low-income patients; $20.7 billion in cuts to the Medicare improvement fund; $13.3 billion in yet-to-be-determined Medicare cuts from the hands of an unelected federal board.  Look, I’m going to stop with the numbers because they get blurred after a while.  We’re talking about a couple of different things, reconciliation and the Senate bill when we start talking about these numbers.  The bottom line is there are no expanded services, there are no smaller premiums.  Nothing that they’re saying about this — Pelosi, Hoyer, Obama — none of it is true.

. . . . .

Caterpillar.  Boy, do we have a long history with Caterpillar, and it is this.  Remember going back a little over a year ago to the stimulus bill, Obama said that the CEO of Caterpillar said he’d sign on. “He’d start hiring people back! He’d start hiring new workers if there were a responsible stimulus bill,” and Obama used that in a speech as a means of garnering future support for it.  Then we learned that the CEO of Caterpillar said, “I never said any such thing.”

And we learned this a little while later at a town meeting in Illinois where a whole lot of cajoling was going on to make people say some things in support of Obama’s stimulus package that they really didn’t think or believe.  So we know that the whole Caterpillar thing was made up, it was a fraud, and the CEO was kind of between a rock and a hard place because the president had put him there.  So Caterpillar, which has a long history with this administration, “said that the health care overhaul legislation being considered by the House would increase the company’s health care costs by more than $100 million in the first year alone.” Now, the president was lying through his teeth at George Mason University again today talking about how premiums are going to come down.  It is just amazing to listen to this man lie, blatantly so, to everybody about everything.

He hasn’t said one thing that is true about this legislation. Not one, folks.  Every argument he makes is specious, misleading, untrue and false.  He’s out there saying premiums are going to come down? Hell, not even Dick Durbin is saying that.  Other Democrats are saying, “Everybody thinks premiums are going to come down after we pass this bill.  I don’t think so.  Premiums are going to go up. We’re just trying to slow the rate of increase here but no premiums are going to go down.” Obama says, “Oh, yeah! Your premium is going to go way down.”  Well, how can that be if Caterpillar says that their company’s health care costs will go up by a $100 million in the first year alone?

“In a letter [yesterday] to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio, Caterpillar urged lawmakers to vote against the plan ‘because of the substantial cost burdens it would place on our shareholders, employees and retirees…. We can ill-afford cost increases that place us at a disadvantage versus our global competitors,’ said the letter signed by Gregory Folley, vice president and chief human resources officer of Caterpillar. ‘We are disappointed that efforts at reform have not addressed the cost concerns we’ve raised throughout the year.’” So what are they gonna do?  What’s Caterpillar going to do if their health care costs go up $100 million?

Well, here’s a story from today.  ”Caterpillar Lays Off 121 Workers,” more to come.  ”Caterpillar today notified 121 workers at its Clayton [North Carolina] manufacturing plant that their jobs will be eliminated in 60 days. The layoffs are part of a previously announced corporate restructuring in which the company is shifting production of backhoes to the United Kingdom.”

So that’s how they’ll deal with it.  They’ll simply fire people. “Caterpillar has about 1,800 employees in North Carolina. The bulk of those workers work at company facilities in Clayton, Cary and Sanford. Last year Caterpillar eliminated hundreds of jobs locally and 19,000 worldwide in response to the recession. Today the company employs about 93,000 people around the globe.”

…..

Larry Kudlow, by the way, posted this online: “As of this morning, the Intrade pay-to-play betting parlor is giving a 75 percent probability that it will go through. So Intrade seems to think so. But here’s what I do know: Obamacare’s worst tax hike is the imposition of a new 3.9 percent Medicare payroll tax on capital gains and other investments.  What will this do? It will depress the economy, depress wages, and depress jobs. Washington doesn’t understand that you can’t create jobs without new healthy businesses. Can there be anything dumber?” Larry, they do understand, this is my whole point. Obama knows exactly what he’s doing, and the Democrats, the radical left Democrats know exactly what they’re doing when they are destroying the economy like this.  The Medicare tax has been upped, it was at 2.6%, now it’s 3.9%, Medicare payroll tax on capital gains and other investments.

…..

Here’s something Politico has as an exclusive.  This doc fix, what the hell is the doc fix?  Well, here’s a story involving it.  ”Democrats are planning to introduce legislation later this spring that would permanently repeal annual Medicare cuts to doctors, but are warning lawmakers not to talk about it for fear that it will complicate their push to pass comprehensive health reform. The plans undercut the party’s message that reform lowers the deficit, according to a memo obtained by Politico,” and they’ve got a pdf copy of it here that you can link to.  ”Democrats removed the so-called doc fix from the reform legislation last year because its $371-billion price tag would have made it impossible for Democrats to claim that their bill reduces the deficit. Republicans have argued for months that by stripping the doc fix from the bill, Democrats were playing a shell game,” because they’re gonna put it back in later, which is happening.

They’ve uncovered a secret memo.  They’re going to do the doc fix in a separate piece of legislation, and abortion, federal funding for abortions is coming in a separate bill.  Mark my words.  I heard Pelosi today talking about, or maybe it was yesterday, the law of the land is that there are no federal funds available for abortions, and that is the law of the land.  It’s going to happen in the second bill.  Just like this doc fix is going to happen in a separate bill.  There’s going to be more than second bills, there’s going to be third, fourth, fifth, tenth, and 20th bills, to get this to single payer that Obama said in 2003 and 2007 that he wants, that Kucinich said he was promised yesterday that we’re gonna get, that Clyburn said on Charlie Rose last night: oh, yeah, yeah, we’re going to do it just like we did civil rights, in stages but we’re going to get it. Barney Frank: We don’t have the votes for single-payer right now but we’re going to get ‘em.  Jan Schakowsky, Democrat, Illinois: Our purpose is to shut down private insurance and go to single-payer.  Well, all of those things are not in this reform package, but the steps that lead us there are.

When you have to have insurance, when it’s mandated that you buy it and a fine is incurred and 12,000 new IRS agents to police this, you are fined if you don’t buy it and the fine is much less than what it would cost you to buy the policy, what are you going to do?  You pay the fine.  Then when insurance companies are required to cover you only from the moment you get sick or have an accident and no preexisting condition can cause you to be denied coverage, well, we’re no longer talking about insurance, we’re talking about welfare, and when we have the public option, when we eventually get that, the government does not ever have to show a profit, so there’s no way a private insurance industry can compete with it, so no matter how you look at this, Schakowsky has telegraphed for us what’s going to happen, bye-bye private insurance industry, and Obama declared war on them, full open warfare today in his speech at George Mason University or his rally to get this going.

So it’s clear what’s ahead of us, it’s clear, everybody knows it, and the deficit reduction that they’re lying about doesn’t exist. Hoyer with another memo today that’s been uncovered to members of the Democrat Party: do not get into a discussion about specific CBO numbers, do not go there, especially what they say on page two, don’t go there, just keep talking about deficit reduction, it reduces the deficit, it reduces the deficit, it reduces the deficit.  So, the simplest way to explain what’s happening here is that not one Democrat in a leadership position in the House or in the Senate or in the White House is telling anybody the truth.  Not one truthful thing is being said about the cost, about the result, about the purpose, about the scope of this bill.  Not one truth is being told.  And memos are going out from Democrat leaders in the House to members to not tell the truth and don’t get caught, don’t get sucked into a conversation where you might have to discuss specifics because you’ll be caught in the lie if you do.  So keep lying, is their message.

Now, if you are still calling the Capitol Hill switchboard or if you, for example, you in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, outside Pittsburgh, if you’re calling Jason Altmire, if you’re calling any of these undecideds who are being very public about their undecided status, you tell ‘em about the doc fix.  These people, a lot of these moderate Blue Dog types, these undecideds, they can be swayed if they can be shown that this whole thing busts the budget.  See, they’re being lied to as well as all the rest of us are, and they believe it.  They believe… Well, that may be a stretch.  I don’t know that they believe that this is actually going to bring down costs and bring down the deficit.

Now, here are some things in the reconciliation package, the reconciliation fixes that will not be part of the bill if they vote Sunday and Obama signs it.  This is the deem-and-pass thing.  I’ve told you about the increase, almost 1% increase in the Medicare payroll tax on investment income, capital gains.  There are even deeper cuts to Medicare Advantage, which will mean fewer and less attractive Medicare Advantage plans available to seniors.

But the doc fix, the doc fix squares it either way because this is a secret memo that’s been discovered, the doc fix will add $321 billion to the 940 that the CBO says they’ve got, the doc fix makes this thing well over $1.2 trillion in a separate bill that comes later.  There’s no deficit reduction whatsoever.  If you’re still pounding the phones, get through to them and say, the dock fix, we’ve heard about it, separate legislation coming in the spring, it makes the whole cost $1.2 trillion.  If you vote for this, you’re sunk.  You vote for this on the basis that you believe there’s deficit reduction going on, you are being fooled, lied to, or what have you.  But this is gonna shake up some of these moderate Democrats when they hear this ’cause the doc fix has been taken out, specifically to get this thing under a trillion dollars, but it’s going to go back in, in a piece of legislation, after this thing passes.

Mr. Limbaugh also argues that Obama and the Democrats  hidden agenda is the eventual elimination of private health insurance and that the US is “on the road to government-run health care”.  (See Michael Connelly’s comments, above).

Limbaugh offers this video as proof of the Democrats’ intent “in their own words”:

Communications consultant Jon Kraushar says:

Sean Hannity, another radio and television commentator says that yesterday was a “sad day in the history of America”.

Andrea Tantaros, writing for Fox News, says that this whole mess is “The Biggest Abuse of Power and Arrogance Washington Has Ever Seen”.

I don’t know what to think . . . and I’d very much like to read your comments on all of this.

Let me leave you with what I consider to be an incredible statement by Rev. Al Sharpton (apparently a supporter and confident of President Obama):

Did the American public really overwhelmingly vote for socialism when they elected President Obama?  If you are an American voter and you voted for Obama, did you vote for socialism?  Again, I’d really like to read your comments on this.

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