Obama supports reconciliation

Yesterday, President Obama gave his blessing to congress to go ahead with a very controversial strategy called reconciliation to pass the unpopular health care reform bills.  Reconciliation is a tactic that only requires a simple majority of 51 votes to pass legislation.  Currently, the House has passed a version of the health care bill and the Senate has passed another version of the health care bill.  The bill was stalled in its tracks once Scott Brown, Republican of Massachusetts, won Ted Kennedy’s (Democrat) senate seat.  Democrats lost their super-majority and now republicans can filibuster the passage of the bill and democrats now do not have the 60 votes to override a filibuster.   In order to avoid the filibuster the democrats are now planning to resort to reconciliation pass the bill with a simple majority (51 votes). 

The reconciliation strategy is a bad idea for everyone–including the democrats.  Reconciliation is typically used only for budget, spending, and debt-limit bills and was designed so that budgets would be easier to pass in order to keep the government rolling.  Reconciliation has been used in the past to pass contentious bills.  The difference today with this health care bill is that it will fundamentally change 17% of our economy and affect every American’s health care.  For a change of this magnitude reconciliation is a way to thwart the will of the people.  Since November of 2009 every major poll of Americans show that the majority do not support the current health care legislation by a margin of 10+ points.  Another point of concern is that the republicans have been shut out of the process.  Those republicans represent millions of Americans–so in essence those American’s views on health care have not been given their due representation. 

President Obama and the democrats seem willing to face an enormous political backlash by resorting to reconciliation–many will fall on the sword so to speak to do this.  Why?  Why would they do this?  My only explanation is that if they can get this passed–even though they will lose politically–they beleive it will fundamentally change America and will never be repealed (even if they lose control of congress). 

From what I know of the current House and Senate bills–they are not designed to reduce costs.  In fact Utahan’s will see anywhere from a 30% to 50% increase of the bat from this legislation.  Those increases will come from mandating that everyone buy health insurance, guaranteeing coverage without pre-existing conditions, and community rating (premiums of younger go up and subsidize premiums of the older); costs which I am opposed to because they are not good for my clients (this topic will be another blog post).  That increase in health insurance premiums does not include the already burdensome 10% to 15% renewal increases every year due to health care inflation and utilization.   No matter what the politicians say, this bill will not reduce health care or health insurance inflation; but rather, it will increase Federal Government control of your health care and health insurance, increase your taxes as you subsidize other’s costs (even more than you already do), and leave you with less choice as private insurance is regulated out of business. 

I agree that health care reform legislation should start over and focus on reducing the costs of health care, incentivize consumerism, and incentivize better quality rather than federal control of  health care. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnpWEqhyaEM