So The Senate Has Passed the Health Care Bill-Bah Humbug

Sad I suppose to be talking so much politics on Christmas Eve but well they had the vote today so what can you do.

This whole Health Care bill shows in many ways how the media has fallen down on the job. It also shows I think the danger of even progressive and even SOME Catholic Social Justice groups from being so D.C. based!!!

There has been a lot of outrage among Governors and not just far right GOP ones. We see an example of this today.

The bill is so bad it renders Sen. Chuck Schumer mute: “Mayor Bloomberg and Gov. Paterson both slammed the Senate bill Monday, charging it would cost the city more than $500 million and rip a $1 billion-a-year hole in the state budget. Schumer, a veteran streetfighter for federal cash, has been suddenly recast as a defender of Washington—and a deal he helped cut that shafts New York. ’He’s being uncharacteristically quiet in part because the numbers don’t look that good,’ said Baruch College political scientist Doug Muzzio. . . [Schumer] bristled at criticism that he stood by as other states won sweetheart deals.” Well, how come Nebraska got more than New York then?.

Elsewhere at Contentions this observation.

A central feature of this bill is the $500B cuts in Medicare funding, including slashing the popular Medicare Advantage plan and the imposition of a newly beefed-up Medicare Advisory Board, which will be empowered to devise new ways of cutting payments to doctors, hospitals, nursing homes, and other health-care providers. In the absence of any real reform measures, the only feasible way to control costs is limiting care—i.e., rationing. Medicare already denies medical claims at double the rate of many large private insurers. And with $500B or so less to work with, many more Medicare claims will be denied.

This is what the Cornhusker Kickback and the rest of the bribe-a-thon are enabling. The Senate bill spared voters in a few states the harshest impact of the new care-depriving regime so that the same regime could be foisted on the entire country. Connecticut voters get $600 million in additional Medicaid benefits, Vermont voters get $10B in health-care centers, and hospitals in North Dakota and Iowa get richer Medicare reimbursement rates. Those deals made possible reduced rates of reimbursement and Medicare funding for the rest of the country, rates so paltry and unacceptable to a few key senators that they had to use all their pull to spare their own states. If it is unacceptable for them, why must the rest of the country live with it?

Exactly!!!! However this has not been really explained by the "intelligent" folks in the media. I was not really on the Bash MARY LANDRIEU bandwagon for the so called Louisiana purchase. What people fail to realize that was money for a one time problem dealing with the hurricane and how the rules did not forsee a consequence of that . However that one time fix does nothing to shelter my State from what is coming next if this passes in it's current form. Perhaps Mary Landrieu can give us some insight what we can cut fro the State Budget.

What progrms will have to be cut in these States. We are looking at a lot of cuts at already stretched budgets that have just had to go through a series of painful cuts. For those that are concerned about Social Justice have they considered a lot of these cuts will affect the poor the most . Perhaps Michael Sean Winters over at the Catholic America magazine that supports all this can come down to Louisiana and elsewhere and tell us where to cut with the budget knife .

Shall we cut higher and secondary education to the core and how much shall we cut programs that help the poor and old folks so we can pay for this perhaps no so fabulous Health Care.

Thankfully there is still the House. I expect Governors and a lot of State Reps from legislators are going to being giving House members a earful. Plus a message that they will not go down alone for having to make the unpopular choices in their states because of deal made in D.C.