Alright. For whatever reason, many people have been expecting me to post about the newly signed bill about Health Care Reform (I’ve already written one, here: A Response. This past Tuesday, President Barack Obama signed a revolutionary health care bill into law. This bill would increase coverage to several million people and would force health care providers to adhere to various regulations as set by the 50 different markets that will be developed by this health care reform. Why we are walking backwards into a country that is no longer united, I do not know. Perhaps it is because the federal government is too terrified to make a solid decision on abortion (the Democratic party is united… united so long as no controversial topics come up). Perhaps it is because America is incapable of learning from past mistakes.
Other noteworthy comments about the bill:
- No Republican voted for the bill (in either House or Congress)
- The bill passed by 7 votes.
- People who refuse Health Care or take health care that is not accepted will be fined.
- Of all the bills that have been introduced to reform health care, this is the hardest one for me to find online. It took me 2 hours to simply find it. What the hell. The name (the actual name of the bill) has changed enough times that keeping track of it is nearly pointless.
- Hopefully people who have been following the bill(s) now understands how a bill is passed. Perhaps the one good thing about this bill is that it encouraged people to understand how bills are passed into law (although I’m more convinced that people just gave up).
But what I really wanted to talk about was not the health care bill. Today, I want to talk about this ridiculous obsession about the health care reform bill. There are other bills out there that the Houses have to vote on and there is other news out there. Instead, we spent all our time concentrating on this one bill, which well all knew was going to pass whether we liked it or not because the Democrats have an obscene majority in the House and the Senate. Democrats who are touting it off as a new revolutionary bill that is the equivalent to the Social Security Act clearly have not seen how Social Security has been driving our financial standing into the ground and also clearly haven’t taken a serious look at the cost of the bill. (Either that, or they just simply believe every word that the Democratic Party says.) It’s also pretty ridiculous to claim that there have been immediate economic consequences (negative or positive) since it was signed into law on TUESDAY. Any change is simply a result of people’s reactions to the bill, not the bill itself.
Republicans who are too pigheaded to see that we need health care reform are equally ignorant. At least the Democratic party is making efforts to improve our health care situation. The Democratic Party at least made several attempts to include things that the Republican party wanted, while the Republican party has done nothing to try and create reform. The non-bipartisanship of this law is not the whole fault of the Democrats, who have made continual attempts to appease the Republicans.
And it’s this drama that keeps the Health Care Reform bill/law in the news. Rather than concentrating on things we can change and things that are equally important, we default back into Health Care Reform.
Below is a list of bills and laws that are equally important and are greatly ignored by mainstream America.
- S.773 – Cybersecurity Act of 2009 – Creates a Cybersecurity Advisory Panel and allows the Department of Commerce to act as a Clearinghouse. There also a mention of a scholarship in there for students who are interested in going into cyber security, and ideas for competitions that students can enter.
- H.R.2847 – Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act (HIRE) – Signed into law on March 18, 2010. Reallocates money into House of Commerce and Transportation agencies. Also creates new incentives for hiring unemployed workers.
- H.R.4213 – American Workers, State, and Business Relief Act of 2010 – Passed both the House and amended by the Senate (must be re-passed with the new changes by the House). It extends the current deadline to file for certain unemployment benefits. In total, the bill will cost $140 billion dollars, with NO plan to make up the money in any other way (at least the Health Care Bill[s] had various plans, although weak, to make up the lost revenue over a long period of time). [Credits to jmflora for catching my mistake]
- H.R.3221 – Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2009 – Reallocates money from the Stafford loans and from programs that allow for government subsidies to support private company loans to put into the Pell Grant program. Increases money to advertising science, math and technology fields to Hispanics and Blacks (aka: more scholarship money for them).
- S.1733 – Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act (what is it with candidates for President who lost putting out bills on energy reform?) – Introduced by Senator John Kerry. Creates a nation-wide cap-and-trade program that would promote decreased greenhouse gas emissions.
- H.R.1207 – Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009 – Introduced by Ron Paul (the only Republican who supports this bill, mind you). Overhauls the current relationship between the Federal Reserve and the US Congress/US Treasury. Gives control to the Comptroller General, who will audit the Federal Reserve
- H.R.226 – Broadcaster Freedom Act of 2009 – Stops the FCC from reintroducing the Fairness Doctrine, which required news broadcasters to present opposing views on controversial issues (the Fairness Doctrine was abolished in 1987).
- H.R.231 – The Video Game Health Labeling Act of 2009 – Creates new labels warning parents about the dangers of certain video games. The warning would read such (for games with a rating of above T): “WARNING: Excessive exposure to violent video games and other violent media has been linked to aggressive behavior”
- H.R.414 – Camera Phone Predator Alert Act – Requires that all phones with a camera make a sound (like a click-click camera sound) when taking a picture
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I’m not asking for society to follow all the bills being passed in the US Government. Just please be aware that Health Care Reform is not the only be all end all of topics. It is certainly not the only one that is up for debate in the Houses.
Sorry — the final version of HR 4213 has NOT been passed by the House. It is not awaiting the President’s signature. The original version of HR 4213 was passed by the House and then amended by the Senate. The Senate passed the amended version, and then sent it back to the House, as required, for its passage. The amended version is still under debate in the House — over disagreements on the sources of funding for the programs in that bill and for the Senate amendments to it. Until the final bill is passed by both the House and the Senate, it cannot be signed into law by the President.
Sorry jmflora! I seem to have overlooked part of my sources and you are indeed correct, the Senate returned the bill to the House on March 18 after passing it eith the new ammendments on March 10. The new ammendments include the introduction of an excise tax and establishing a discretionary spending cap to decrease costs. I did know that you nered both the Senate and House approval for it to be signed into law, but I didn’t realize that the Senate had approved it with ammendmemts.
Thanks for pointing that out! I’ll fix it as soon as I can!
– Mint
I can only speak for myself as to why I wanted a blog post from you, namely because you usually provide some form of cohesive commentary to these kinds of things. I failed to remember that you commented on it before, but a lot can happen from December to now, and the bill had a few revisions, although I believe most of them weren’t that notably drastic. I was expecting something akin to a follow up to the December post, and I suppose this is it. I guess, since you do post more often than not, it’s almost expected that you would say something. Consider it a praise, Jo. People read what you write, and they want more of it.
I found the bill in like five minutes…it was on Opencongress. I just went to the Health Care Reform page on Wikipedia and found the name of the bill. Of course, I’m talking about the only bill that’s passed, the “Senate Bill”, not reconciliation. http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h3590/text
Also, the student aid bill was included as a rider for the health care bill…so people have been talking about it, I guess.
You may think that we are focusing too much on this bill, but it really is an important bill…and it wasn’t going to “clearly win”. In fact, many f the sites I read indicated that it was going to lose…it was only when the Stupak Block was brought over that the bill passed. Wasn’t that the day before, if not the morning of the vote? Yes, the Democrats may have an obscene majority, but an obscene majority means nothing if NO Republicans are voting with them, and when a significant portion of Democrats voted against it. The bill barely scraped by.
The reason this bill is so important to so many people is because it affects almost EVERYONE. Cameras clicking? Broadcasters? Video game labels? Not to disparage those bills, but those aren’t important to the American people, who will now be FORCED, by LAW, to buy insurance! It has the people riled up, and not for no good reason (I say this supporting the bill).
And not only that, but HCR has bogged down Congress. Republicans has threatened filibuster many times, and never in my immediate memory has Congress been so partison. I really wouldn’t be surprised if it were the Republican’s waterloo. I don’t know who will take majority in November, but a huge part of it will be health care, I’m sure.
And I don’t know why you’re complaining about people being so interested in this bill…it just means a lot politically. I don’t think the media is focusing too much on it. cnn isn’t. It’s not like they’re ignoring all other news. And when the other bills have their turn, I’m sure a lot more people will take notice than would have other wise.
The vote passed by three, not 9, I think. The number to beat was 216, and they got 219.
*hugs*
-Sean
You would think that people would be inclined to learn where their money is going to. Also, I’ve been convinced that there is no way that Obama and Pelosi would not pass a Health Care Reform bill. They’ve effectively neglected everything else FOR this bill. And if it failed, it would just do a go around again to make sure ANY reform bill would pass.
You raise some good points, but I’m not talking about the Health Care bill not being important (because it is). However, the sheer concentration on the Health Care bill has allowed the news to neglect other pieces of information. Despite the code of ethics, news publishers flock to what is most shiny, and report it as such.
I also am glad that it’s allowing people to concentrate on the news more. I’m just pissed that once this blows over, they’ll go back to their reality TV shows and misconstrued ideas about the wars we’re fighting oversea.
Also, the bill wasn’t up until the day after it was passed and I was frantically looking online for it. It wasn’t even on opencongress, which is where I normally get a chance to take a look at the bills. I did eventually find it on the White House site, and then through NY Times when one of their op-ed columnist wrote about it the day after. I was seeing an updated version, which apparently did not exist for some time after it was voted in.
Also, I forget which newspaper it was, but they put in the wrong bill number. It was marginally hilarious.