Senate health care bill giant power grab for HHS

According to a recent article in the Washington Examiner, the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, or HHS,  stands to gain a lot if the Senate passes its health care bill. The Senate bill, which will be brought to the floor for debate Monday afternoon, will give many unprecedented powers to the Secretary of HHS, Kathleen Sebelius. These powers include the ability to decide where abortion is allowed under a government run health care system, the authority to create a department that could make cost-saving cuts to Medicare and Medicaid without Congress's approval, and the creation of "the basic per enrollee, per month cost, determined on average actuarial basis, for including coverage under a qualified health care plan."

"The legislation lists 1,697 times where the secretary of health and humans services is given the authority to create, determine or define things in the bill," declared health care expert Devon Herrick, of the National Center for Policy Analysis. This is a real problem, considering that a bill should clearly determine or define such details regarding these issues within its own text. Allowing a person or a committee to insert its own meaning into the text of the bill at a later point is a dangerous abuse of power. Perhaps it is for this reason that some liberals are in such a hurry to pass the bill. For if they can rush it to a vote without allowing enough time to properly examine the language of the bill, they can retain the vague language therein, and later force the bill to say whatever they wish it to, in order to support their own agenda. 

"It's a huge amount of power being shifted to HHS," agrees Edmund Haislmaier an expert on health care policy and insurance markets at the Heritage Foundation,  "and much of it is highly discretionary." One of the most outrageous powers HHS would gain from the bill, warned Haislmaier, is the authority to regulate insurance. States have traditionally held this power, but the Senate health care bill would endow the federal government with this power instead, thus violating the States' rights under the tenth amendment. Enabling the federal government to exercise such power could very well widen the path toward the destruction of the market for private insurance by forcing companies to artificiallly lower premiums and other charges.

"Health and Human Services ... doesn't have any experience with this," Haislmaier concluded. "I'm looking at the potential for this whole thing to just blow up on people because they have no idea what they are doing. Who in the federal government regulates insurance today? Nobody."

Indeed, the federal government not only has no experience in regulating insurance, but it also has no medical expertise with which to effectively provide adequate treatment for all patients. A patient's care should be individualized according to his or her situation and needs by a trained medical professional, not standardized and then either approved or disapproved by a government body. 

"There's an insurance company bureaucrat in between the patient and her doctor right now," stated Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, on ABC's "This Week." Such bureaucracy can only complicate and worsen a patient's ability to obtain proper treatments, rather than improve it. Treatments will be much quicker and more effective without the government bureaucrat to act as a middle man between the patient and doctor, for the doctor can then prescribe and obtain the best treatment for his or her patient specifically, according to the particular situation.

This type of bureaucracy remains one of the reasons that many Americans oppose the current health care proposals before Congress. According to a recent Gallup poll, the number of Americans who do not want the proposed health care bills to pass has increased. 49% of Americans polled now say they would advise their Congress members to vote against health care legislation, while 44% say they would encourage their representative to vote in favor of it. Prior to asking those were uncertain which way they leaned, the divide was even wider, with 42% against it, 35% in favor of it, and 22% with no opinion.

"The downward trend among independents is troublesome for Democrats, who are pushing the bill to be passed as soon as possible," writes Kyle Trygstad, of Real Clear Politics. "In mid-September, 48% of independents wanted their member of Congress to vote for health care. But that number has dropped to 37% in Gallup's latest survey. Support among Democrats, at 76%, has dropped in the last two months as well, while Republican support -- after peaking at 24% last month -- is back down to 12%."

"Despite the considerable efforts of Congress and the president to pass health insurance reform, the public remains reluctant to endorse that goal," stated Gallup's Jeffrey M. Jones.

Yes, Mr. Jones, Americans have many reservations about health care--reservations which are only increased by such a serious power grab of Kathleen Sebelius and HHS. The Senate bill is unconstitutional, and, if passed, will directly violate the tenth amendment of the Constitution by taking away power from the States and consolidating it to the federal government. The federal government simply has no authority to regulate insurance, and no passage in the U.S. Constitution grants them this power. Yet it does grant the States such power, per the tenth amendment: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." It is up to the individual States to determine whether and how they should regulate insurance.

The federal government is not "the people," nor is it a State in itself. Neither the people, nor the States, therefore, should allow the federal government to continue to behave as if it is. Americans must contact their Senators to express their outrage over this power grab by the federal government, and urge them to vote against it.