With the Senate Finance Committee set to approve its health care bill this week, Democrats are tantalizingly close to bringing legislation that would make sweeping changes in the nation’s health care system to the floor of both houses of Congress.
Party leaders still face immense political and policy challenges as they combine rival proposals ”” two bills in the Senate and three in the House. But the broad contours of the legislation are in place: millions of uninsured Americans would get subsidized health benefits, and the government would move to slow the growth of health spending.
Senior Democrats said they were increasingly confident that a bill would pass this year. “I am Scandinavian, and we don’t like to overstate anything,” said Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota and an architect of the Finance Committee bill. “But I have a solid feeling about the direction of events.”
Let’s hope that there is adequate floor debate in both houses of Congress and that the proponents of RADICAL CHANGES in health care can sibstantially PROVE THE NEED for radical changes.
If all that results is CHANGE, then Congress will have RUINED the existing health care system that protects the great majority of Americans in order to improve(?) health care in some undefined manner for some some inadequately defined ‘demographic’ of a ‘supposedly unserved’ population sub-group within the United States.
In other words, Congress will have defied the age-old axiom, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
If Congress does ruin the existing system, then the Democrats can kiss their chances of winning a majority of the American vote in national elections good bye for the next several elections, at least. The impact of this legislation is just too, too big to be ‘swept under the rug’ using the same old populist rhetoric that is being used to promote the health care changes.
And if that happens, the non-Democrat majority in Congress can and probably will vote to undo the damage that ruined the current system.
Unfortunately, they will need a veto-proof majority if there is still a Democrat in the White House.