Obamacare: Indecipherable gibberish

October 12th, 2009 | Author: milwaukeeco1

Oct. 11, 2009, Editorial by the Las Vegas Review-Journal

The details of health care legislation hardly matter anymore; it’s the vast expansion of federal bureaucratic control over medicine that counts to proponents.

Throughout the summer, the country was roiled in a curiously shifting debate. President Obama insisted something be passed quickly — before August, if possible. Democratic leaders made no bones about the fact they wanted something rammed through before a summer recess.

Forced to act quickly, defenders of the free market in medicine — or as much of a free market as remains — seized on a few obvious implications of the proposal, including the kind of financial triage that would cut costs by rationing expensive care to those near the end of life, characterized by the critics as “death panels.”

Proponents insisted there were no death panels in the legislation — at the same time they insisted they were removing that provision.

The odd thing about this whole debate about what was “in there,” is that there wasn’t any “there.” That is to say, there was no single definitive version of a Democratic health care reform bill that all parties could study, analyze and debate.

And it now appears there never will be — right up to the hour of a final vote.

Obamacare: Indecipherable gibberish

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