Four things you should know about the Baucus version of health nationalization, collected by NRO:
First, the mandate really is a tax increase, despite the president’s protestations. The penalty for violating the mandate will be collected by IRS. In addition, the “fees” on manufacturers will be passed on to consumers, which is another form of tax.
Second, the effect of the bill will be to raise the price of insurance for healthy individuals, especially the young, who voted in heavy numbers for Obama. This will hurt low-income people as well by making it harder for them to purchase insurance.
Third, some of the amendments exposed some real weaknesses that the Democrats will have to work through; as K-Lo noted earlier, all but one of the Democrats voted to strike the Bunning amendment, which would have required that the bill text be available online for 72 hours before the vote on it.
In addition, Democrats also rejected the Hatch amendment, which would have stopped implementing the bill’s provisions if 1 million Americans lost “the current coverage of their choice.” This is effectively an admission that Democrats believe many Americans will lose their health insurance as a result of the bill. If they didn’t fear the possibility, it would have been easy to vote for Hatch.
And this is the most conservative of the seventeen jillion bills all fighting for the right to be called “Obamacare.”
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