Apparently if you can’t get the number of votes you need to pass a bill, you can alter the method of voting so that you don’t need as many votes to enact the proposal. Such was the suggestion emanating from the White House this week regarding the Healthcare debate and latest proposal.
Despite the uproar at the suggestion of using reconciliation (which deals with budgets and money allocation) to pass the new healthcare proposal, this method has been linked to healthcare reform in the past. Medicare and Medicaid eligibility and self-employed health insurance are examples to name a few.
Yet an article entitled “unprecedented” was published in National Review by Michael Franc from the Heritage Foundation. In it, Franc states that there is “no precedent for using it to enact a once-in-a-generation rewrite of the relationship buy ventolin ventolin hfa online pharmacy cheap between Americans and their government that appeals exclusively to one side of the aisle”. He further points out in an AOL News interview that “every major piece of legislation has passed on a bipartisan vote”. “It’s a river boat gamble of the highest proportions” when describing the Democratic effort to proceed.
Senator Byrd (Democrat from West Virginia) wrote in The Washington Post that using the reconciliation process which was meant for deficit reduction to change policy “is an undemocratic disservice to our people and to the Senate’s institutional role.”
Even the Wall Street Journal cites this as an “abuse of power”.
If the Medicare cuts to physicians by 21% that took place this week is any reflection of how healthcare is going to evolve, we are in for a very rough ride!
