At the rate the Senate Finance Committee is moving through amendments, they will be finished with the markup in about 40 days. During those 40 days, 353,840 more will lose their insurance and 3,384 more people will die because they lack coverage, all because of Republican committee members' stall tactics.
Yesterday's hearings started with the first of numerous Republican assaults on the timely markup of the legislation at hand. Sen. Bunning proposed an amendment that would require legislative language to be made available online 72 hours before the final vote on the bill, in an effort to delay the vote by 2-3 weeks. Bunning argued that this would allow more transparency into the legislative process... the only problem is that, as Sen. Conrad pointed out by reading the legislative language of another bill, "There are five percent of Americans who would understand this." Sen. Crapo unwittingly proved Conrad's point by misunderstanding the very passage Sen. Conrad had just recited. Finally, after debating this for two bleepin' hours, the committee voted the amendment down.
With that matter squared away, committee members moved on to the question of free speech. If you are now wondering what the first amendment has to do with health care reform, you're not alone. Sen. Kyl proposed an amendment that would clarify that a health plan may, pursuant to constitutional rights guaranteed by the First Amendment, express its views about legislation or legislative proposals to its clients. The amendment stemmed from recent actions by Humana, who sent misleading letters to their Medicare Advantage beneficiaries suggesting that their benefits may be cut under health care reform. The amendment was also voted down in a party-line vote.
As the committee continued to debate into the night, the Republican tactic of delay, delay and then delay some more has become increasingly apparent. While they can't win in the Democrat-dominated committee, they can certainly drag out the fight by endlessly debating anything and everything in their "Hail Mary" play to defeat health care reform.
