Hill touts (benefits only of) health care bill
From Seymour's TribTown.com...
Indiana 9th District Rep. Baron Hill of Seymour said the health care bill passed Sunday in the House will have a positive impact on southern Indiana residents.
“Immediately, the reform measure bans insurance companies from denying coverage to children with pre-existing conditions, creates a temporary high-risk pool for the 10,000 southern Indiana residents with pre-existing conditions to secure affordable care, prohibits insurers from dropping people when they get sick,” Hill said Sunday night.
He added it also “eliminates lifetime limits and restrictive annual limits on coverage, requires new private plans to cover preventatives services and immunizations with no co-payments, allows young people to remain on their parents’ insurance policy until their 26th birthday, makes small businesses that provide coverage to their employees eligible for a tax credit of up to 35 percent of premiums and gives Hoosier seniors a $250 rebate to offset the price of high prescription drug costs.”
All costs; no benefits. If Hill sees it that way, he's ignorant. If he's selling it that way, he's a typical, despicable national politician. I'll bet on the latter.Republicans seeking their party’s nomination to challenge for the 9th District seat this fall said they were disappointed with Hill’s decision.
Three different approaches:
Travis Hankins of Columbus has asked Gov. Mitch Daniels and the Indiana General Assembly to call a special session to exclude Indiana from the health care bill...
Mike Sodrel of New Albany said “Anyone who believes government cost estimates to be certain, as released by the Congressional Budget Office, probably believes in the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny.”Todd Young of Bloomington said he would “continue to lead the charge against this bill and other big government legislation that erodes our liberty and passes along unsustainable debt to our children and grandchildren.”
posted by Eric Schansberg @ 10:16 AM
14 Comments
14 Comments:
If he's selling it that way, he's a typical, despicable national politician. I'll bet on the latter.
Mr. Hill is a Democrat in a conservative district that voted for McCain over Obama by a substantial margin. His vote was therefore an act of courage.
Although courage can lead one down a bad path, I agree with you about his vote. But that wasn't my point!
If we give him credit for courage on his vote, then he gets blame for cowardice in how he's describing his vote. Courage would be to own the benefits AND costs of the legislation. He's not doing that.
My point was your use of the word despicable to describe Mr. Hill. That seemed rather nasty to me.
A strong word, I guess. I have him in "good/bad company" by lumping him with most others-- on both sides of the aisle. What terms would you suggest for someone who describes something vast in terms of benefits and not at all in terms of costs?
Not the word despicable—Webster's Ninth Collegiate Dictionary defines it as "deserving to be despised: so worthless or obnoxious as to rouse moral indignation." That's rather too personal in tone in referring to a politician who has shown courage in voting for something he evidently believes is good for the country. (Certainly, Mr. Hill does not expect us to believe there are no costs; he merely didn't mention them in his remarks.)
OK, mea culpa then! Although "moral indignation" is called for here, that's too strong.
Actually, we don't know his motives or whether this benefits him politically going forward. (For example, he was "stuck" with a yes vote, given his earlier yes vote in this arena. Otherwise, he would have been pummeled even moreso!)
In any case, you keep mentioning his "courage". But that's far too strong-- or at the least, too limited. To note, you can't have a courageous vote with a cowardly explanation.
I can see defending him from my inappropriate word choice, but defending his description of the legislation? C'mon!
I suppose sales puffery isn't courageous, but he's going to be sweating his re-election. However, I'll settle for routine, mainstream politician.
"an historic usurpation of the legislative process — he unleashed the nuclear option, enlisted not a single Republican vote in either chamber, bribed reluctant members of his own party, paid-off his union backers, scapegoated insurers, and justified his act with patently fraudulent accounting" --
I can understand labeling anyone who went along with the above "despicable"
It's a Government Takeover of one-sixth of our economy. They now control all loan operations for college students in this country too. This may be worse than despicable --
how about "evil"?
What will they set their sights on next?
It's a Government Takeover of one-sixth of our economy.
It's nothing of the kind. It's not a single payer or socialist system. There is no public option in the reform, something liberals wanted. Most health care will still be paid for by health insurance companies not the government. Doctors and hospitals will still be independent.
And so far as "usurping the legislative process," the Democrats followed the rules; the system is designed to allow this. It's called democracy. The Republicans opposed the legislation in part simply because they hand the Democrats a big defeat, so went for an all-or-nothing strategy that deprived them of the opportunity to shape the reform legislation. They lost. Too bad.
I meant to say, the Republicans opposed the legislation in part simply because they wanted to hand the Democrats a big defeat.
Of course, I'm not particularly impressed by the GOP, and I'm sure they would have been happy to see Obama's proposal go down in flames for political reasons...but they weren't exactly welcome at the proverbial table either.
In particular, proposals for tort reform-- a modest but significant and reasonable idea-- couldn't get anywhere.
Obama said he would go with (or seriously explore?) the expansion of HSA's (quite helpful), but I'm not sure where that's going-- if anywhere.
Beyond all of this, despite the efficacy of market reforms, it is relatively/quite difficult to make the case. Even assuming they had the will and intellect to make the case, it's fruitless when you're in the (vast) minority.
Obama is not interested in any true reform that would make the system independent and functional -eg. tort reform, HSA's. He wants us all dependent on government socialistic monopoly power so everything can be fair and we can all "share our peanut butter sandwiches" (one of my personal favorite Obamaisms).
The Government is the good guy - they know what's best and will make it happen for us!!!!
The people who actually do the hard work are the evil ones.
Where's the executive order prohibiting federal federal funding of abortion that he promised to sign?
We can only hope that Round 2 will stop this craziness before any more damage is done.
But really, I've been thinking, whatever the case -- we are bankrupt. Our economy is suffocating under the crushing weight of our debt. This is only going to make it worse.
I am not counting on the government to take care of me in any way, shape or form but am getting ready for what the next 10 years and multi-trillion dollar deficits will bring.
Where's the executive order prohibiting federal federal funding of abortion that he promised to sign?
He's signing it today.
You know I have to admit that Obama is a shrewd politician.
He didn't he want it written into the bill.
An executive order will be much easier to repeal when the "time is right" than trying to fight the will of the people and the Congressional red tape.
I also wanted to explain that I believe in sharing and sacrificial giving to help others. I do not believe in govt theft of private income/property.
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