Health Care Update and Summary of Suckiness

How did the Democrats in Congress manage to come up with so many ideas that suck in the bill they just passed? Because the Republicans thought they could distribute pork forever and hold on to their majority without addressing real problems. A little summary of what we get with the Dems in charge of health care legislation, much of this courtesy of Betsy McCaughey in the WSJ.

• Over $1 trillion in new spending, during exploding deficits.
• Requirement to enroll in a "Qualified Plan" even though that plan is not defined.
• One size fits all plan, once it does get defined. Whatever happened to pro-choice Democrats. This will raise the cost of private insurance.
  
• Use of the IRS to enforce health care choice. (I like the Orwellian ring to that.)
  
• Cuts payments to popular Medicare Advantage plans.
• Subsidizes abortion.
• Massive new bureaucracy.
  

A quick summary of Freedom Coalition ideas to reform health care.

• Allow insurance companies to sell across state lines to increase competition.
• Treat privately purchased insurance and employer provided insurance the same in the tax code. That way people will have a better chance to keep their insurance when they change jobs and not be denied for existing conditions.
• Allow and encourage high deductible policies with catastrophic caps so that consumers have more skin in the game.
• Tort reform (notice this isn't first, it would help, but is not a panacea.)
• Require individuals who use emergency rooms to pay for their care, to encourage those who can afford insurance to get some. (See Reason.tv)
• Remove government mandates about what must be covered, so that consumers can choose their best options.
• Expand Pennsylvania's program that rates hospital quality.

Lying bastards on the left say that the Tea Partyers have no plan, but we do, it just doesn't increase the size of government and still goes a long to solving health care problems.

Time to see what can be done to stop this abomination in the Senate. The relative closeness of the vote in the House (220-215) was the only encouragement I could take from the day's events (other than Navy's defeat of Notre Dame.)

And could someone please mount a primary challenge to Louisiana RINO Anh Cao, the only Republican to vote for the bill?