The Lack of Transparency in Health Care Reform

Are you aware that last Wednesday, October 21, 2009, the Democratic leadership lost an important vote on health care reform? Probably not. Not many media discussed it in any detail, if at all. The New York Times did report on it in its Thursday edition, but buried the story deep inside the paper. The Heritage Foundation summarizes the vote: "You have to read all the way to page A-25 in today's New York Times to learn about it, but the Senate took its first floor vote on Obamacare yesterday and the White House lost. Big. The NYT reports: '"Democrats lost a big test vote on health care legislation on Wednesday as the Senate blocked action on a bill to increase Medicare payments to doctors at a cost of $247 billion over 10 years. The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, needed 60 votes to proceed. He won only 47. And he could not blame Republicans. A dozen Democrats and one independent crossed party lines and voted with Republicans on the 53 to 47 roll call."' For more on this important story, go to "Morning Bell: A Whole New Health Care Ball Game," Heritage Foundation, posted on October 22, 2009, in Health Care.

What happened to transparency in discussing and developing health care reform as we were promised by candidate Obama last year? It is non-existent. Instead, in a sleight of hand designed to disguise the true cost of the Democratic leadership's main health care reform proposal, this separate bill on Medicare payments to doctors was sent to a vote. Only the trick did not work. Even Democratic senators recognized what was going on and knew that it was not fiscally responsible. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) is quoted in the New York Times article as saying, "'On the eve of a historic debate on health care, it's essential to show a commitment to real reform,' which includes fiscal responsibility." See "Democrats Lose Big Test Vote on Health Legislation," New York Times, as posted on October 21, 2009. Our own Democratic Senator, Claire McCaskill, also voted against the bill.

When will the President and Congress recognize that it is more important to fix the federal budget before taking on other significant "reforms"? This is an opportune time for a realistic review and reform of the federal budget and to reign in federal spending. What the Congress should be doing right now is establishing a fiscally realistic, balanced and sustainable budget that keeps revenues and expenditures in line and which eventually retires federal debt. That process requires the examination of all federal programs to determine the purpose of each program, whether that purpose is proper for the federal government to pursue and if it is producing the desired result. Once a sound budget base is established, we can then undertake reasonable, effective health care reform with a better understanding of its true cost.

Bottom line: What the public wants now is fiscal sanity imposed on the federal budget, and efforts focused on creating new jobs.