PS on “You’ll have to read it…..”

(Ditto on this one; posted earlier and then disappeared.)

A few days ago we posted on the crocodile tears over the health insurance legislation under consideration in Maine.  If you missed it, you can read it here.  It included this passage:

During the House debate leading up to the roll-call vote, more than a dozen Democrats registered their opposition to the provisions of the bill as well as to its fast-track progress through the legislative process.

As fate would have it, a nice couple I’ve never met, other than on the opinion pages of The Ostrich, had a recent letter on this very subject. I won’t name them, but if I did, their names would remind you of Prairie Home Companion and Lake Wobegone.

The letter reads, in part:

Nothing is more important than adequate insurance and nothing should be considered more carefully than changes to the insurance safety nets we now have in place.

Yet, LD 1333 — An Act To Modify Rating Practices for Individual and Small Group Health Plans and To Encourage Value-based Purchasing of Health Care Services — was introduced as a four-page bill, grew to 29 pages in one work session and is now 45 pages and has had no public hearing in its present form.

Few legislators have even had time to do a careful reading, put forth questions and get reliable answers.

The haste with which this is being pushed makes us very uncomfortable and fearful of  unintended consequences and  collateral damage.

Now we could be wrong, but I’d bet you a dozen Frosty’s Donuts (if I could ever catch them when they’re open) that this couple hailed the 2000 page plus Obama-care bill as a long-needed and brilliant solution to all our health care ills.  And never for a moment worried about ‘unintended consequences and collateral damage.’  Funny how that works, isn’t it?

And in case you’re worried that the Bondo patching hadn’t even had a chance to dry, as Rep. Sharon Treat claimed, here’s an update:

• After the first vote in the house, a second ‘reading’ and vote was taken, and the bill passed again.
• Yesterday, the senate debated the bill, proposed amendments, and passed the bill in amended form.
• Now the bill goes back to the house in its new form to see if that chamber will go along with the changes.

Hopefully, Sharon and her friends will have had a chance to read it by now.  But you never know; she may not read it until it passes.

Or not even then.

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