On several blogs today, I have seen the following scary warning about "secret language" that Harry Reid has somehow snuck into the Health Care Reform bill in the "dead of night" that will make it impossible for Congress to amend or repeal the bill later. Here's one example, taken from this comment:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada buried this anti-democratic poison pill designed to prevent any future Congress from repealing the central feature of the Healtcare Bill.
Beginning on page 1,000 of the measure, Section 3403 reads in part: ". it shall not be in order in the Senate or the House of Representatives to consider any bill, resolution, amendment or conference report that would repeal or otherwise change this subsection."
In other words, if President Barack Obama signs this measure into law, no future Senate or House will be able to change a single word of Section 3403, regardless whether future Americans or their representatives in Congress wish otherwise!!
Note that the subsection at issue here concerns the regulatory power of the Independent Medicare Advisory Board (IMAB) to "reduce the per capita rate of growth in Medicare spending."
That is precisely the kind of open-ended grant of regulatory power that effectively establishes the IMAB as the ultimate arbiter of the cost, quality and quantity of health care to be made available to the American people.
And Reid wants the decisions of this group of unelected federal bureaucrats to be untouchable for all time.
No wonder the majority leader tossed aside assurances that senators and the public would have at least 72 hours to study the text of the final Senate version of Obamacare before the critical vote on cloture. And no wonder Reid was so desperate to rush his amendment through the Senate, even scheduling the key tally on it at 1 a.m., while America slept.
True to form, Reid wanted to keep his Section 3403 poison pill secret for as long as possible, just as he negotiated his bribes for the votes of Senators Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Bernie Sanders of Vermont behind closed doors.
The final Orwellian touch in this subversion of democratic procedure is found in the ruling of the Reid-controlled Senate Parliamentarian that the anti-repeal provision is not a change in Senate rules, but rather of Senate "procedures."
Why is that significant?
Because for 200 years, changes in the Senate's standing rules have required approval by two-thirds of those voting, or 67 votes rather than the 60 Reid's amendment received.
Reid has flouted two centuries of standing Senate rules to pass a measure in the dead of night that no senator has read, and part of which can never be changed. If this is not tyranny, then what is?
DON'T SIT BY AND LET THIS HAPPEN IN THE DARK!!! FORWARD TO EVERYONE ON YOUR LIST!
Because these sorts of things tend to be total fabrication, I first went to check Snopes. Unfortunately
their page lists the status of this story as "undetermined," because they are still researching it. I don't blame them for taking awhile, since the current HCR bill is 2500 pages long and not real fun to slog through. So, I did it for them. I read the relevant provision, which is over 30 pages of dull as hell. And the short answer is, the language quoted is in there, but it doesn't do what they say it does.
Section 3403 establishes an Independent Medicare Advisory Board that will study and submit proposals to the President and Congress each year, beginning in 2014, as to ways to contain costs in Medicare. Section (c)(2) specifies in subsection (A)(1) that the proposals submitted in each year must "include recommendations so that the proposal as a whole...will result in a net reduction in total Medicare program spending in the implementation year that is at least equal to [a savings target specified in another section.]" Also, "The proposal shall not include any recommendation to ration health care, raise revenues or Medicare beneficiary premiums...increase Medicare beneficiary cost-sharing...or otherwise restrict benefits or modify eligibility criteria." In addition, "the proposal shall not include any recommendation that would reduce payment rates for items and services furnished." Subsection (C) also requires that the proposal "be designed in such a manner that implementation of the recommendations contained in the proposal would not be expected to result...in any increase in the total amount of net Medicare program spending relative to the total amount of net...spending that would have occurred absent such implementation."
Later, in section (d)(3), the bill does state "It shall not be in order in the Senate or the House of Representatives to consider any bill, resolution, or amendment, pursuant to this subsection or conference report thereon, that fails to satisfy the requirements of subparagraphs (A)(i) and (C) of subsection (c)(2)." It also says "It shall not be in order in the Senate or House of Representatives to consider any bill, resolution amendment or conference report...that would repeal or otherwise change the recommendations of the Board if that change would fail to satisfy the requirements of subparagraphs (A)(i) and (C) of subsection (c)(2)." The bill then goes on to state that this particular provision cannot be repealed or changed except by a 3/5 vote, and specifies parliamentary rules limiting the length of debate on any such proposed changes.
So what does all this legal mumbo jumbo mean? Well, yes, the language cited above is really in the bill. But it doesn't prevent Congress from ever tinkering with healthcare reform as some would suggest, and it isn't designed to prevent oversight from a board intended to bring draconian healthcare rationing to Medicare. The bill's language expressly prohibits the board fromm implementing rationing, increase of premiums, and other scary things.
Instead, this language is intended to prevent Congress from rewriting the proposals to be drafted by a board whose sole job is to figure out ways to control healthcare costs. Controlling costs is often politically unpopular, so the fear would certianly be that a proposal would come to Congress and the politicians there would amend the proposal in perpetuity to add funding for all sorts of additional programs and violate the spending limits, in order to make their constitutents happy. We need only look at the way the closings of military bases were often botched or used as political footballs to see how easily cost cutting measures become viewed as political kryptonite for politicians to be wheeled and dealed away to nothing.
Also, this provision is limited solely to the section establishing the Independent Medicare Advisory Board. It does not apply to the rest of the bill, and it doesn't limit future tinkering with the rest of the legislation through amendments or even repeal.
Now, I do have a question as to whether this provision is Constitutional, so I am hoping the drafters of the bill included a severability clause making clear that just because one section might be thrown out by the courts, the rest of of the bill is unaffected and remains in place.
Still, if anyone tells you that Harry Reid and the Democrats are trying to pass healthcare reform that can never be amended or repealed no matter how much of a disaster it might be, you deserve to know what the bill really says. So, I read it so that you don't have to. Go forth and correct the misinformation, my readers.
