Health Care
“Something’s going to have to give,” are the words used by Congressman Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) in describing the shotgun wedding about to take place between the Senate healthcare bill and its companion measure adopted by the House on November 7. Stupak gained fame for penning the provision of the House bill prohibiting the funding of abortion in any policy financed by federal subsidy.
Everyday the headlines in the nation’s newspapers report the same salient and unsurprising fact: Healthcare “reform” is unpopular to historic levels and yet President Obama and his legislative factotums still insist on passing it at all costs. Day after day, the sharp edges are sanded down so the bill can roll through the Senate and into the Oval Office by Christmas.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported on December 18 that autism disorders increased 57 percent in only four years. At the end of 2006, data indicated that one in 110 American children had an autism disorder that was diagnosed by the time the child was eight years old.
Calling in the Big Guns: Oval Office Meeting to Heal Healthcare Rift
Written by Joe Wolverton, II, J.D.
In what has been described as a last-ditch effort to save the healthcare overhaul that is first on his Christmas wish list, President Barack Obama has summoned all 60 members of the Senate’s Democratic caucus to the White House on Tuesday for an 11th-hour pep talk in anticipation of an impending vote on the Senate’s version of a bill that would alter the healthcare industry by changing Medicare, offering long-term care to retirees and the disabled, and creating a government-subsidized and administered panoply of health insurance policies.
As the first snow of the season fell on Washington, D.C., there was a flurry of activity inside the Capitol Building, as well. As Republicans made motion after motion, trying to send the entire legislation back to committee where it would essentially languish, Democrats propped up the measure with mostly symbolic gestures designed to demonstrate fiscal responsibility and compassionate care for the elderly and the working poor.
