Democrats hiding what’s in the health care bill

From The Heritage Foundation’s Morning Bell:

To ensure that the Senate would actually know what they were voting on, Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) offered an amendment that would have required that actual legislative text, as well as a final Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimate of the cost of the bill, be posted for 72 hours on the Senate Finance Committee website for public review before the Senate Finance Committee could vote on its final passage. The Bunning amendment was defeated on a largely party-line vote, with all Senate Democrats – with the exception of Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-AK)- voting against it.

Since proponents of Obamacare have shown themselves to be completely indifferent to what their legislation will actually do to the American people, conservatives have offered other amendments that would hold President Obama accountable for his promise that Obamacare would not cause Americans to lose their current doctor or health care coverage:

• Sen. Cornyn (R-TX) offered an amendment that would have required the Secretary of HHS to certify that at least 75 percent of the physicians in the United States would accept Medicaid patients before the proposed mandatory Medicaid expansions are implemented. That amendment was defeated.
• Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) offered an amendment that would have required the Secretary of HHS to certify Obamacare would not cause more than 1,000,000 Americans to lose the current coverage of their choice. That amendment failed on a party line vote.
• Another Hatch amendment provided that if the Medicare funding reductions in the Medicare Advantage program were to result in a loss of benefits for seniors using Medicare Advantage, those provisions would be nullified. That amendment was also rejected.

The majority in the Senate has completely gutted any semblance of transparency or accountability in the health care debate. They refuse to provide the legislative language and time necessary for the CBO to analyze their legislation and they have rejected all measures that would protect the Americans people from Obama’s broken health care promises. Common sense dictates that Congress needs to step back and start over instead of passing a plan that would reorganize one-sixth of our entire economy without even understanding what the consequences to average Americans would be.