WHAT a refreshing concept: attempt to bring honest to the accounting in the new law...Here's a couple of articles telling about some of the amendments intended to help "fix" this mess.......There is not a single chance any will pass Go, but my intention in posting these is just for historical purposes...The Repubs are aware that the only thing they can do is try to alert the people of some of the total screwups in this new law...
KLP
Here come the Republican amendments
By Shailagh Murray
Senate Republican amendments to the health-care "fixes" bill are stacking up, and some could prove tough for Democrats to oppose when the around-the-clock "vote-a-rama" begins later today. And yet if the legislation changes in any way, it must return to the House for a final vote. So look for Democrats to hang tough -- at least on most of these measures.
Here are highlights from the growing list:
Among the 12 amendments offered by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), a physician, one would would stop fraudulent Medicare and Medicaid payments for prescription drugs prescribed by dead providers, or to dead patients. According to Coburn, this actually happens. The amendment also would prohibit coverage of Viagra and other erectile dysfunction medications to convicted child molesters, rapists, and sex offenders. "There's no prohibition in the bill for this, at this time," Coburn said on the Senate floor.
Other Coburn amendments seek to offset the hiring of new government health-care workers with comparable layoffs; add new fraud-busting measures to cut Medicaid and Medicare abuses; and exempt band-aids, surgical gowns and latex gloves from a new tax on medical devices.
Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH), the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, is pushing an amendment that could potentially gut the underlying bill, by ensuring that its hundreds of billions in Medicare cuts be spent on the Medicare program -- instead of to expand coverage for the uninsured. "It is a hard-and-fast commitment that Medicare savings will go to benefit Medicare, and that should be our purpose," Gregg said.
And Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the ranking GOP member of the Finance Committee and an early negotiator of the Senate bill that become law on Tuesday, wants to force President Obama, his senior staff, members of Congress and other high-ranking government officials to buy their health insurance over new exchanges. The bill just signed by Obama would create these state-based marketplaces for those who don't have access to affordable plans through their employers.
"President Obama has publicly advertised that his reforms would give members of the public the same coverage available to members of Congress," Grassley explained in a statement from his office. "This amendment would ensure that he, his successors, and all his appointed political officials would also have the same coverage members of the public enrolled in the exchange receive."
By Shailagh Murray | March 24, 2010; 12:10 PM ET
voices.washingtonpost.com
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Senate GOP tries to block Obamacare expansion
By: SUSAN FERRECHIO
Chief Congressional Correspondent
March 24, 2010
Defeated in their effort to stop the Democratic health care bill from becoming law, Republicans are now determined to block a bill that expands and alters the monumental legislation signed by President Obama.
Republicans began offering amendments aimed at stripping out provisions that cut Medicare, increase taxes and add to insurance subsidies.
"I think we want to have a number of amendments that will highlight deficiencies in the bill and educate the American people as to the problems in it and give Democrats an opportunity to correct some of them," said Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl, R-Ariz.
Republicans are hoping that they can successfully amend the bill, or have it changed by challenging it procedurally with the Senate parliamentarian so that the measure will have to be approved again by the House, which passed it Sunday.
The legislation is being considered under a process known as budget reconciliation, which is governed by a strict set of rules that dictate what can be considered so that the bill can pass with just 51 votes instead of the usual 60.
"They didn't have a big margin to spare the first time around, so who knows if the reconciliation bill looks different whether people may consider there is no reason this time to support the bill," said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who heads the Senate GOP's campaign arm.
Republicans offered an amendment that calls into question the accounting Democrats used to keep the larger health care bill from increasing the deficit.
The amendment would prohibit the government from imposing the planned $500 billion in Medicare cuts in the plan unless the Congressional Budget Office can show that the money produced by those cuts is not used to pay for the expanded health care subsidies.
Sen. Mike Johanns, R-Neb., said the amendment is intended "to bring honesty to the accounting. This idea of double-counting the same dollar makes no sense whatsoever."
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., an author of the main health care bill, argued that the amendment would prohibit the bill from being implemented.
"It's an attempt to kill the bill," Baucus said, adding that the Senate approved the Medicare cuts when it passed the overall health care bill in December. "This is a stale argument."
The corrections bill makes several major changes to the new health care reform law, many of them sought by House members. It shifts the costs of paying for the plan from a tax on expensive insurance plans and puts the burden on those earning more than $200,000, who would have to pay a higher Medicare payroll tax The corrections bill also creates a new, 3.8 percent tax on investment income. The reconciliation bill also creates a new federal student loan program that the CBO said would save $61 billion over the next 10 years.
Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., called the provision "the nationalization of the student loan industry."
sferrechio@washingtonexaminer.com
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