ObamaCare Draft Leaked

Keith Hennessey, former senior economic advisor to President George W. Bush, walks us through the first draft of Obama’s health care bill.

After reading Hennessey’s piece about the 15 things to know about the bill, my first reaction is OMG! Is this the economic environment in which we want to impose new taxes on both consumers and employers? WHAT are these people thinking? And make no mistake; any government mandate requiring people to either buy insurance or pay a penalty is nothing less than a tax.

It seems that a draft of Senator Kennedy’s (D-MA) health care bill leaked over the week-end and Hennessey was able to get a copy of the draft as a text file (173 K), and as a single Acrobat file (3.4 MB). Both files are searchable.

Hennessey writes:

“Calling it the “Kennedy” bill is something of an overstatement.
Senator Kennedy chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions
committee, and his staff wrote the draft. By all reports, however,
Chairman Kennedy’s health is preventing him from being heavily involved
in the drafting.

Senator Reid has designated Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) to supervise the
process, but as best I can tell, it’s really the Kennedy committee
staff who are making most of the key decisions. For now I will call it the
Kennedy-Dodd bill.

As the committee staff emphasized to the press after the leak, this is
an interim draft. I assume things will move around over the next several
weeks as discussions among Senators and their staffs continue. This is
therefore far from a final product, but it provides a useful insight into
current thinking among some key Senate Democrats.

Here are 15 things to know about the draft Kennedy-Dodd health bill.”

Continue reading "Understanding the Kennedy health care bill"…