HOUSE HEALTHCARE BILL DOOMED TO FAILURE

I believe that we can both afford and mold a health care package for the 50 million uninsured Americans who are desperately in need of one. Although I do not agree with the urgency placed on it by the Obama administration, I believe it is a national imperative. Personally, I believe it could be implemented best by making Medicare available to any American citizen wishing to pay a discounted rate for it.

However, having watched the house committee proceedings for a brain numbing amount of time, it is obvious to me that the house package will be so pork filled with expensive and unnecessary inclusions that it will never be passed in the house, much less prove affordable. In-home visits, nutritional counseling, transportation to medical facilities are three of many ideas that will send this package to doom. Yet every option and every vote goes straight down party lines, and adds to an already bloated 1000 page initiative.

I watched and waited for some sense of common ground, some indication that they could work together to form a viable package worth consideration in the full house. The video shows an amendment by Republican Eric Cantor, someone who is emerging to be one of the modern day leaders of a flailing (and failing) Republican party. Simply put, he objects to the health care bill to include paying for abortions that are not the result of rape, incest, or in an attempt to save the life of the birth mother.

I am as liberal as anyone, but this is a deal breaker for me. I do not want to reverse Roe v. Wade, but I would not / could not ask the American taxpayer to continue to pay for abortions which are not the result of saving the mothers life, or ending a pregnancy caused by rape or incest. I would think that at least one liberal on the committee could see the logic and break ranks and vote for the Cantor amendment to the bill.

Yet, like so many sheep, the committee votes entirely on party line, and they do not take the time to so much as debate on the issues and options offerred. Does everything have to be political on the hill? I honestly don't know why they even meet in committee....their votes are as predictable as the House health care packages' certain death in the full House of Representatives.