I have already ranted on the unprecedented power grab by the federal government with its passing of the health care bill.  Of course there are thousands of news stories and opinions on the topic in recent days.  Here are a few I found interesting:

Representative Mike Coffman: Claims of cost savings are utterly false

In an editorial in the Denver Post on Saturday, Representative Coffman tackled the interesting accounting measures used to make it appear as if the health care bill would reduce the deficit. 

They (the CBO) must accept the economic premises given to them by those writing the legislation. In this case, the Democrats. So when Speaker Nancy Pelosi asserts she can pay for much of the bill by stripping hundreds of billion from waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicare, the CBO is not allowed to challenge that assumption.

…

Another assumption is the length of the cost analysis itself. The tax increases in the bill (about a half trillion) and the Medicare cuts (transfers to fund the new program) will start immediately, but the benefits don’t begin to kick in until after 2013.

This is done so Democrats can say that the first 10 years the program will produce a cost savings. Based on when the benefits will begin, the cost of the bill is essentially calculated by comparing 10 years of new taxes and Medicare cuts with only six years of spending under the new program.

Representative Jared Polis: Illegal immigrants should have been covered too

This one I found pretty interesting.  According to the Longmont Times-Advocate, Representative Polis wanted to see illegal immigrants covered by the health care bill.

Polis noted that the bill still will leave one large group uninsured. The measure bars illegal immigrants from buying health insurance in the exchanges, even with their own money, or from being eligible for Medicaid.

“While this makes a huge dent, there are still 12 million uninsured, undocumented people we need to deal with under a different law,” he said. He expected that immigration reform would soon be discussed, and that it would see more bipartisan support.

Wall Street Journal: A very steep price

The Wall Street Journal editorial yesterday took on all aspects of the legislation.  Most importantly they drove home the point that Democrats now own the nation’s health care system and all the failures that are likely to ensue. 

While the subsidies don’t start until 2014, many of the new taxes and insurance mandates will take effect within six months. The first result will be turmoil in the insurance industry, as small insurers in particular find it impossible to make money under the new rules. A wave of consolidation is likely, and so are higher premiums as insurers absorb the cost of new benefits and the mandate to take all comers.

Liberals will try to blame insurers once again, but the public shouldn’t be fooled. WellPoint, Aetna and the rest are from now on going to be public utilities, essentially creatures of Congress and the Health and Human Services Department. When prices rise and quality and choice suffer, the fault will lie with ObamaCare.

Denver Post: Legislation ‘deeply flawed’, ‘propped up on misleading estimates and backroom deals’

The editorial board of the Denver Post is certainly one of the most left-leaning there is and they did favor a public health care option.  However, even they can see that the process in which this legislation came to be was corrupt at all levels. 

Like Markey, others in Congress switched their votes after seeing a preliminary Congressional Budget Office estimate on the bill’s cost. But as The Washington Post pointed out last week, the CBO’s “work is often more art than science, and although the forecasts that accompany legislation are always filled with uncertainty, this one contains more than most.”

The CBO can only score the legislation it’s given, and this legislation double-counts Medicare cuts and makes hopeful pronouncements. Proponents say it cuts the deficit, but a huge chunk of that cut comes from the federal takeover of student loans, which lawmakers inexplicably jammed into the reconciliation bill.

The numbers just don’t add up.

This is not a credible way to make policy, and it is no way to treat the American people.

The Washington Examiner: Democrats to America: Drop dead

The Examiner is one of the few conservative newspapers in the country and they pulled no punches in their assessment.  They outline what they see as a possible constitutional crisis as a result of the passage of the measure.

Here’s why: Never before in American history has a measure of such importance been imposed on the country by the majority party over the unanimous opposition of the minority. Democrats have continually sought to create a halo effect for Obamacare by associating it with Social Security and Medicare. But the reality is that both of those landmark programs were approved with strong bipartisan support in both the Senate and House. The Senate vote on Social Security in 1935 was 77-6, with 64 Democrats being joined by 14 Republicans. In the House, the 373 votes for Social Security included 77 Republicans. When Medicare passed in 1965, the 68-21 Senate vote included 13 Republicans, while 65 Republicans were among the 313 affirmative House votes. Such bipartisan consensus was what the Founders sought with the Constitution. But Democrats made a mockery of bipartisanship by shoving Obamacare down the throats of Republican lawmakers and snubbing the popular majority that opposed it. The Democrats have undercut the credibility of the law they created.

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