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H.B. 3200

Posted by Mark | Filed under Politics

A rel­a­tive of mine recently  for­warded the fol­low­ing email to me:

Here are some specifics  on the pro­posed “health care bill.”  If any­one is “okay” with any of this crap, they are insane.  It’s time to call our congressman’s.  offices and tell them we do not want them to sup­port this health bill. No mat­ter what party you belong to, this is bul-#@@ of the high­est order.

Here is a very clear view about the prob­lems our con­gress is hav­ing with the so called “health­care reform” bill!

IF YOU  DON’T READ THEM ALL.… BE SURE TO LOOK AT  58–59.

Sub­ject:    Judge  David Kithil on the health­care reform bill:

The arti­cle is in the Mar­ble Falls, Texas news­pa­per.  It  was writ­ten by a for­mer county judge, David Kithil.  He  voiced his oppo­si­tion to HB 3200, and gave EXACT SPECIFICS, to  include page and para­graph in the bill on why this Health Bill  is BAD.

Here are excerpts from the arti­cle, giv­ing EXACT pages  and para­graphs in the bill and why it is so bad.  You can  for­ward this to all of your addressees.  I think he hits  every­thing  right on the head and the oppo­si­tion you may  encounter can­not argue over these points:

JUDGE  KITHIL:  “I have reviewed selected sec­tions of the bill  and find it unbe­liev­able that our Con­gress, led by Speaker  Nancy  Pelosi, could come up with a bill loaded with so  many wrong-headed ele­ments.  We do need to reform the  health insur­ance sys­tem in Amer­ica in  order  to make cov­er­age afford­able and avail­able to every­one.   But, how many of us believe our fed­eral gov­ern­ment can  man­age a new pro­gram any  bet­ter than the bank­rupt  Medicare pro­gram or the  under­funded Social Secu­rity  pro­gram?
Both Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats are equally  respon­si­ble for the finan­cial mess of those two pro­grams.
I  am opposed to HB 3200 for a num­ber of rea­sons.
To start  with, it is esti­mated that a fed­eral bureau­cracy of  more  than 150,000 new employ­ees will be required to admin­is­ter HB3200.  That  is an unac­cept­able expan­sion of a  gov­ern­ment that is already too intru­sive in our lives.
If we are going to hire 150,000 new employ­ees, let’s put  them to work pro­tect­ing our bor­ders, fight­ing the mas­sive drug prob­lem and putting more law enforcement/firefighters out  there.”

NOW,  here comes the good stuff:  “Other prob­lems I have with  this bill include:

Page  50/section  152:  The bill will pro­vide insur­ance to  all non-U.S. res­i­dents, even if they are here illegally.

Page  58 and 59: The gov­ern­ment will have real-time access to an  individual’s bank account and will have the author­ity to make  elec­tronic fund trans­fers from those accounts.

Page  65/section 164:  The plan will be sub­si­dized (by the  gov­ern­ment) for all union mem­bers, union retirees and for   com­mu­nity orga­ni­za­tions (such as  the Asso­ci­a­tion  of Com­mu­nity Orga­ni­za­tions for Reform Now — ACORN).

Page  203/line 14–15:  The tax imposed under this sec­tion will  not be treated as a tax.  (How could any­body in their  right mind come up with that?)

Page  241 and  253:  Doc­tors will all be paid the same  regard­less of spe­cialty, and the gov­ern­ment will set all  doc­tors’ fees.

Page  272. sec­tion 1145: Can­cer hos­pi­tal will ration care accord­ing  to the patient’s age.

Page  317 and 321: The gov­ern­ment will impose a pro­hi­bi­tion on  hos­pi­tal expan­sion; how­ever, com­mu­ni­ties may peti­tion for an  exception.

Page  425, line 4–12: The gov­ern­ment man­dates advance-care plan­ning  con­sul­ta­tions.  Those on Social Secu­rity will be required  to attend an “end-of-life plan­ning” sem­i­nar every five years.

Page  429,  line 13–25:  The gov­ern­ment will spec­ify which  doc­tors can write an end-of-life order.”

HAD  ENOUGH????  Judge Kithil then goes on:  ” Finally,  it  is specif­i­cally stated this bill will not apply  to mem­bers of  Con­gress. Mem­bers of Con­gress are  already  exempt from the Social Secu­rity sys­tem and have a well-funded  pri­vate plan that cov­ers their retire­ment needs.  If they  were on our Social Secu­rity plan, I believe they would find a  very quick “fix” to make the plan finan­cially sound for the  future.”

Hon­or­able David Kithil, Mar­ble Falls, Texas.

I decided to seek out an online copy of the bill to get an idea of how accu­rate Mr. Kithil’s claims might be, as his claims sounded like a load of hog­wash to me. A quick google search turned up a copy of the bill over at OpenCongress.org which I’ve used to make my com­par­i­son of the bill to Mr. Kithil’s claims.

1. “EXACT SPECIFICS, to include page and para­graph in the bill on why this Health Bill is BAD”.
   • Page/paragraph num­bers are use­less for com­par­i­son with­out hav­ing an iden­ti­cal print copy. If Mr. Kithil had legit­i­mate com­plaints with spe­cific parts of the bill, why didn’t he ref­er­ence them all by their Sections/Sub-section head­ings or per­haps even by includ­ing quotes from the bill so other peo­ple could see exactly what part of the bill he was talk­ing about?
   • I also find it inter­est­ing that Mr Kithil appar­ently wrote such an amaz­ing arti­cle against H.B. 3200 that peo­ple are feel the need to for­ward it to every­body they know, and yet they don’t for­ward the entire arti­cle that he wrote.
     • I attempted to do some dig­ging into whether any such arti­cle was writ­ten by a David Kithil of Mar­ble Falls, TX but have not been able to find any­thing except ref­er­ences to this email chain-letter.
2. “it is esti­mated that a fed­eral bureau­cracy of  more  than 150,000 new employ­ees will be required to admin­is­ter HB3200“
   • If the Far Right was inter­ested in back­ing this bill; this com­ment would instead be about how the bill will help out our strug­gling econ­omy by cre­at­ing jobs. But since they don’t like the bill, it’s about waste. Also, where is Mr. Kithil get­ting this esti­mate from? By fail­ing to quote a source, it makes one won­der if he didn’t just pull a high out of thin air to try and make peo­ple panic over the bill.
3. “Page  50/section  152:  The bill will pro­vide insur­ance to  all non-U.S. res­i­dents, even if they are here illegally.“
   • Sec­tion 152 is titled PROHIBITING DISCRIMINATION IN HEALTH CARE and noth­ing in it guar­an­tees cov­er­age to ille­gal aliens. Addi­tion­ally, a later por­tion of the bill, SEC. 246. NO FEDERAL PAYMENT FOR UNDOCUMENTED ALIENS, specif­i­cally for­bids the bill from pay­ing for health-care for ille­gal aliens.
4. “Page  58 and 59: The gov­ern­ment will have real-time access to an  individual’s bank account and will have the author­ity to make  elec­tronic fund trans­fers from those accounts.“
   • As best as I can tell, Mr. Kithil is refer­ring to SEC. 164. ADMINISTRATIVE SIMPLIFICATION. ‘SEC. 1173A. STANDARDIZE ELECTRONIC ADMINISTRATIVE TRANSACTIONS. (4) © which reads “enable elec­tronic funds trans­fers, in order to allow auto­mated rec­on­cil­i­a­tion with the related health care pay­ment and remit­tance advice;” And if we apply a bit of thought to what that says, it’s really no dif­fer­ent from using your debit card to buy milk at the gro­cery store. Thanks for point­ing out the obvi­ous there, Mr. Kithil.
5. “Page  65/section 164:  The plan will be sub­si­dized (by the  gov­ern­ment) for all union mem­bers, union retirees and for  com­mu­nity orga­ni­za­tions (such as  the Asso­ci­a­tion  of Com­mu­nity Orga­ni­za­tions for Reform Now — ACORN).“
   • I will note that sec­tion 164 is SEC. 164. ADMINISTRATIVE SIMPLIFICATION and every­thing I see under it appears to be talk­ing about how the plan is to be run. But there is noth­ing I can find in the bill which seems to sup­port Mr. Kithil’s claim that the plan will be sub­si­dized for union mem­bers, union retirees and for com­mu­nity orga­ni­za­tions. If Mr. Kithil or another oppo­nent of this bill can find me the rel­e­vant por­tion of the bill which makes up the basis of this claim, I’ll be happy to revisit it.
6. “Page  203/line 14–15:  The tax imposed under this sec­tion will  not be treated as a tax.  (How could any­body in their  right mind come up with that?)“
   • PART VIII–HEALTH CARE RELATED TAXES, Sub­part A–Tax on Indi­vid­u­als With­out Accept­able Health Care Cov­er­age, SEC. 59B. TAX ON INDIVIDUALS WITHOUT ACCEPTABLE HEALTH CARE COVERAGE., (e) Other Def­i­n­i­tions and Spe­cial Rules-, (6) NOT TREATED AS TAX IMPOSED BY THIS CHAPTER FOR CERTAIN PURPOSES — “The tax imposed under this sec­tion shall not be treated as tax imposed by this chap­ter for pur­poses of deter­min­ing the amount of any credit under this chap­ter or for pur­poses of sec­tion 55.” So basi­cally for tax pur­poses, this par­tic­u­lar tax can­not be used in cal­cu­lat­ing tax cred­its. Big whoop, our tax sys­tem is nearly as con­fus­ing and bro­ken as our health-care sys­tem. Is it really any sur­prise that some­thing like this is in the bill?
7. “Page  241 and  253:  Doc­tors will all be paid the same  regard­less of spe­cialty, and the gov­ern­ment will set all  doc­tors’ fees.“
   • Again the lack of proper doc­u­men­ta­tion of Mr. Kithil’s argu­ment, but my best guess is he’s refer­ring to some lan­guage in the bill that the Sec­re­tary must nego­ti­ate rates for health-care items/services such that the gov­ern­ment will not pay less than the rates already set in the Social Secu­rity Act and not more than the aver­age of other QHBP. Again, this is fear-mongering on the part of the Far Right and if they were sup­port­ing the bill; they’d point out this bit as being fis­cally respon­si­ble on their part.
8. “Page  272. sec­tion 1145: Can­cer hos­pi­tal will ration care accord­ing  to the patient’s age.“
   • (18) AUTHORIZATION OF ADJUSTMENT FOR CANCER HOSPITALS-  What this por­tion of the bill really does is give the Sec­re­tary the abil­ity to study the costs of pay­ments to can­cer hos­pi­tals and if it is deter­mined that these spe­cialty hos­pi­tals are charg­ing more for the same ser­vices as gen­eral hos­pi­tals, then the Sec­re­tary has the author­ity to adjust pay­ments to these can­cer hos­pi­tals to reflect those costs.  Which sounds more like this bill would have the gov­ern­ment pick­ing up more of the expense for patients going to a can­cer hos­pi­tal, and that sounds good to me.
9. “Page  317 and 321: The gov­ern­ment will impose a pro­hi­bi­tion on  hos­pi­tal expan­sion; how­ever, com­mu­ni­ties may peti­tion for an  exception.“
   • I’m shocked as for the first time since I started review­ing Mr. Kithil’s claims, this one appears to be entirely accu­rate. It appears he is mak­ing a ref­er­ence to © PROHIBITION ON EXPANSION OF FACILITY CAPACITY. But where he sees a prob­lem, I see a nec­es­sary step towards reform. When you’re try­ing to restruc­ture some­thing as com­pli­cated as the US health-care sys­tem, you’re much bet­ter off min­i­miz­ing the num­ber of vari­ables you have to deal with. Hence, the pro­hi­bi­tion on expand­ing health-care facilites. How­ever since hav­ing those facil­i­ties can mean life or death to patients; the cre­ators of this bill have included pro­vi­sions for health-care providers to ask for an exemp­tion. Why exactly Mr Kithil finds this to be a prob­lem is not made clear in the email, and I would be happy to dis­cuss his com­plaints on this point if he cares to make them.
10. “Page  425, line 4–12: The gov­ern­ment man­dates advance-care plan­ning  con­sul­ta­tions.  Those on Social Secu­rity will be required  to attend an “end-of-life plan­ning” sem­i­nar every five years.“
    • While there is lan­guage in this bill for advance-care plan­ning which includes men­tion of end-of-life plan­ning; the way it’s writ­ten, it’s clear the inten­tion is to make the patient aware of what pal­lia­tive, hos­pice and other care ser­vices the health-care provider offers which would nat­u­rally be of impor­tance for a per­son reach­ing the end of their life­time. Are those con­sul­ta­tions going to be filled with hap­pi­ness & joy? Prob­a­bly not. Is it a good idea to put infor­ma­tion in the hands of peo­ple who will need? Definitely.
    • It’s also good to point out that under SEC. 138. INFORMATION ON END-OF-LIFE PLANNING, (b) “Noth­ing in this sec­tion shall be construed-“
      • “to require an indi­vid­ual to com­plete an advanced direc­tive or a physician’s order for life sus­tain­ing treat­ment or other end-of-life plan­ning document;”
      • “to require an indi­vid­ual to con­sent to restric­tions on the amount, dura­tion, or scope of med­ical ben­e­fits oth­er­wise cov­ered under a qual­i­fied health ben­e­fits plan; or”
      • “to encour­age the has­ten­ing of death or the pro­mo­tion of assisted suicide.”
11. “Page  429,  line 13–25:  The gov­ern­ment will spec­ify which  doc­tors can write an end-of-life order.“
    • The phrase “end-of-life order” never appears in this bill and after search­ing through the bill, I can­not find any sim­i­lar phrase to indi­cate the gov­ern­ment can have doc­tors write such a thing.
    • On the other hand, there is lan­guage through­out the bill specif­i­cally detail­ing how assisted sui­cide it com­pletely forbidden.

So hope­fully now that you have links to not only the bill itself, but all the rel­e­vant por­tions of the bill, you will take the time to actu­ally read the bill and see if it some­thing you should sup­port or not (rather than blindly for­ward­ing on some­thing with­out research­ing it).

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About Mark McKibben

Mark is a data analyst for [REDACTED], currently residing in the Midwest. CoffeeBear is a place for him to spout off about whatever catches his fancy. In his spare time, Mark does a bit of webdev & design. To stalk him more effectively, try following him on Twitter.

22 November 2009 | 4:24PM | Comments (25)

Health Care, Law, Politics

25 Comments

1. Ken says:
   November 23rd, 2009 at 8:11 am

   email debunked.

   I hope you hit ‘reply to all’?

   Reply to this Comment
   • Mark says:
     November 24th, 2009 at 7:12 am

     Maybe I should have, but I didn’t. Partly because I didn’t want to make waves with the rel­a­tive who is rather impor­tant to me. And partly because I wasn’t sure how the other peo­ple who also got for­warded this bit of garbage would react.

     Besides It’s one thing for me to spout off my opin­ions to an indi­vid­ual to those peo­ple who have some inter­est in what I have to say (e.g. any­body who vis­its this site) but quite another thing to hi-jack some­body else’s email thread.

     Reply to this Comment
     • cg says:
       January 19th, 2010 at 11:07 am

       Your analy­sis par­al­lels my own so I would declare it spot on. I also read the bill in response to receiv­ing this for­warded email. Kithil’s inter­pre­ta­tion of the can­cer hos­pi­tal bit was par­tic­u­larly laugh­able — except that too many gullible peo­ple are swal­low­ing it hook, line and sinker.… BTW, I did hit “reply all” when debunk­ing the points. Peo­ple seem to be drawn to the “judge” title, IMHO. How­ever, they for­get that some judges are elected, which is no true indi­ca­tor of judi­cial abil­ity. Addi­tion­ally, some mag­is­trates call them­selves “judge” and, depend­ing on gov­ern­ing state law, may not be required to have a law degree, which casts doubt on their par­tic­u­lar abil­ity to inter­pret legal documents.

       Bot­tom line, John Q Pub­lic needs to stop read­ing this bunk and learn to read for themselves.

       And finally, has any­one stopped to con­sider that this is sim­ply the House bill and that what’s likely to come out of con­fer­ence is likely to have sig­nif­i­cant modifications.
2. John Mor­ris says:
   December 1st, 2009 at 11:01 am

   Good work.I wish you had been a lit­tle quicker. It would have saved me two hours of quick research yes­ter­day which I did in order to respond to a fam­ily mem­ber. My con­clu­sions were the same as yours.The real ques­tion is how any­one could choose to believe that this for­mer county judge would dis­cover such aston­ish­ing pro­vi­sions that respon­si­ble con­ser­v­a­tive think tanks had failed to find.Or,if any of it were true wouldn’t the Wall Street Journal,rather than the local Texas paper,break the news? The sad answer is that Kithil’s sort of mis­in­for­ma­tion is not cre­ated for those in the mar­ket for facts;it caters to those who need a dogma “fix” J Morris,Esq.

   Reply to this Comment
   • Bar­bara says:
     February 18th, 2010 at 11:11 am

     With advi­sors who state “you are not a viable human until you reach the age of 14″ or “rationing med­ical care to the aged is accept­able” in their papers, speeches make one tend to believe they are truly monsters.

     Reply to this Comment
     • Mark says:
       February 18th, 2010 at 11:23 am

       Funny but the only place I’ve seen any­thing even close to what you just men­tioned are in press releases from right-wring pro­pa­ganda machines. If you have a reli­able source for this infor­ma­tion, feel free to post links to it. Oth­er­wise, I’d rather you didn’t try to move these com­ments into an emo­tional fire fight from the rea­son­able con­ver­sa­tion they have been.
3. furi­ousd says:
   January 10th, 2010 at 10:51 pm

   Thanks for post­ing this. My Mom sent me this and is con­vinced it’s true. I am amazed that peo­ple will con­tinue to believe this tripe from unknown and dubi­ous sources. This is exactly what I need to reply to her as I assured her it was bunk and would let her know what I could find out.

   Reply to this Comment
   • Bar­bara says:
     February 18th, 2010 at 11:05 am

     I would sug­gest you read the bill your­self rather than “believe” either side. Your mom believes one side and you the other nei­ther of you have read the bill but sim­ply believed what is your per­sonal choice to believe.

     Reply to this Comment
     • Mark says:
       February 18th, 2010 at 11:29 am

       I agree that furi­ousd should def­i­nitely read the bill and form his own opin­ion. How­ever it sounds like when furi­ousd fully intended to go out and read the bill, so he could share his opin­ions on it with his mother. Per­haps by this time (over a month after furi­ousd com­mented) he has read the bill and made an informed opinion.
4. furi­ousd says:
   January 10th, 2010 at 10:52 pm

   I will sim­ply add that I wish every­one would reply this to all, as this is whole “Judge Kilith” let­ter has spread like wild­fire through­out the inter­nets, and most peo­ple who want to believe it, will.

   Reply to this Comment
5. backhome2006 says:
   January 12th, 2010 at 11:53 am

   I did a (very) lit­tle research yes­ter­day and found that David Kithil DOES exist. How­ever, I checked with the news­pa­per (pro­vid­ing a copy of Kithil’s pur­ported let­ter) this morn­ing and had this reply:

   ——————————-

   Sorry, we can find no such let­ter in our files.

   Phil Schoch, Exec­u­tive Editor/General Man­ager
   High­land Lakes News­pa­pers
   830–693-4367, ext. 226
   phil.schoch@highlandernews.com

   Reply to this Comment
6. S. Con­roy says:
   January 18th, 2010 at 1:04 pm

   I checked out the news­pa­per first, and dis­cov­ered that while Kithil does exist, as the man­ag­ing edi­tor states, the only story regard­ing him involves a dis­puted fed­eral land claim many months ago. There is absolutely NO ref­er­ence to this phony letter.

   To make things even more inter­est­ing, the copy of the let­ter that was sent to me stated that the let­ter was printed in, I believe, the August 17th edi­tion (I no longer have that copy of the let­ter, so can’t con­firm the exact date now). When I checked out the news­pa­per, I dis­cov­ered that it only comes out Tues­days through Thurs­days, and that the Aug. 17 date was a Monday.

   As some­one above stated, peo­ple who WANT to believe this, will, seem­ingly regard­less of proof, evi­dence that it’s a lie, and so on. It makes me sad and angry at the same time.

   Reply to this Comment
7. ZZMike says:
   January 23rd, 2010 at 12:56 pm

   I was sus­pi­cious, too, as soon as I read ” Can­cer hos­pi­tal will ration care accord­ing to the patient’s age” — that should have been “hospitals”.

   You’re def­i­nitely right about not using sec­tion num­bers. Page num­bers are use­less. And they come out with a new ver­sion — both House and Sen­ate — every few weeks.

   There is a judge named David Kithil — Bur­net County, TX.

   There’s more than enough wrong with this mon­stros­ity of a bill with­out hav­ing to come up with fake items.

   Reply to this Comment
8. s. con­roy says:
   February 18th, 2010 at 3:43 pm

   Bar­bara, the health reform bill has ALWAYS stated that if you like the plan you have now, you can keep it. It has NEVER involved forc­ing peo­ple to choose a spe­cific plan…not even mem­bers of Congress.

   If they like their plan , they can keep it. If you like yours, you can keep it. If you don’t, you can change plans.

   This bill goes nowhere near far enough, IMO, toward gen­uine reform or cost sav­ings. But it is a start. My idea of real reform involves a single-payer plan–and we could start by expand­ing Medicare. But that would be entirely too sim­ple, I guess.

   Reply to this Comment
9. George says:
   February 24th, 2010 at 8:53 am

   Mark, thanks for the effort in debunk­ing this. I am the CEO of a very large prac­tice (28-physicians) and garbage like that found in this email is really affect­ing the argu­ments for valid health­care reform. I have spent many hours doing the exact same thing you have done for my rel­a­tives just to explain the points of the bill. It is really sad to think that the Repub­li­cans, the orig­i­nal pro­po­nents of many ele­ments of this bill over the past 15 years, are now totally twist­ing the facts to defeat the progress being under­taken. Keep up the good work!

   Reply to this Comment
10. Judy says:
    February 28th, 2010 at 9:53 am

    Unfor­tu­nately — our “elected” offi­cials (Demo­c­rat and Repub­li­cans) don’t care about OUR best inter­est any­more. Maybe when they are first elected.….but it doesn’t take long for that to change. I feel that the gov­ern­ment is already in our lives TOO much. Yes, we do need health care fixed, but remem­ber these are the peo­ple who fixed it where it is now. We are being taxed to dealth already and they haven’t man­aged to use our taxes for the good of the peo­ple (all of us not a selected few). I am over 65 and shud­der to think what will hap­pen to my great grand­chil­dren and gen­er­a­tions after that.

    Reply to this Comment
11. Judy says:
    March 5th, 2010 at 8:58 am

    Why doesn’t any­one men­tion that the insur­ance com­pa­nies charge more pre­mi­ums because the cost of health care (hos­pi­tals, doc­tors, etc) is higher because of law­suits which insur­ance com­pa­nies have to pay, etc, etc. It’s like a dog chas­ing it’s tail and of course the con­sumers have to pay the cost. If they can’t tax income higher they will just tax other things.……gas, cloth­ing, util­i­ties ( have you ever looked at your taxes on your gas or elec­tric bill) and even­tu­ally they will get around to tax­ing all of our food.

    Reply to this Comment
    • E Mo says:
      March 7th, 2010 at 7:29 pm

      Judy, Your com­ment about the lawyers caus­ing higher insur­ance pre­mi­ums is spot on. What you may not know is that the Democ­rats, from the White­house on down, have con­tin­u­ously refused to include ‘tort reform’ in the new health plan. Tons of arti­cles have been writ­ten about the num­bers of 90% to 97% of all lawyer dona­tions to can­di­dates, goes to Democ­rats. Fol­low the money. The insur­ance com­pa­nies don’t care, they sim­ply add more to the pre­mi­ums so they always win. When the num­ber grows, their % mark-up means more dol­lars in their pocket, from our pocket.

      Reply to this Comment
    • Mark says:
      March 8th, 2010 at 6:44 pm

      Really, you’re going to bring up tort reform/malpractice insur­ance as an argu­ment against health care reform? Seri­ously? Don’t you real­ize that sort of reform will save at most 2.3%?

      @ E mo: That’s inac­cu­rate. Obama has said on 17 Sept 2009 of last year that he’s will­ing to work on tort reform.

      Reply to this Comment
12. Troy says:
    March 9th, 2010 at 1:29 pm

    I see that you “debunked” every­thing except the part where this new health­care reform applies to every­body except Con­gress. Care to elaborate?

    Reply to this Comment
    • Mark says:
      March 9th, 2010 at 1:56 pm

      You’re quite right; I for­got to talk about that bit of the orig­i­nal email. Sorry about that.

      I just went back through the bill, and I see noth­ing in it which specif­i­cally states that this bill applies to every­body except Con­gress. The clos­est I can see to any­thing even remotely like that would be Pro­tect­ing the choice to keep cur­rent cov­er­age. And that sec­tion of the bill was put in there to allow any­one who wants to keep their exist­ing cov­er­age to do so; which makes that sec­tion a pro­tec­tion of the bill for peo­ple who like their exist­ing coverage.

      Do I think Con­gress is going to dump their exist­ing health cov­er­age for what­ever watered down ver­sion the Repub­li­cans will let pass? No.
      Do I think the bill would give more rights/power/protection to the aver­age per­son if Con­gress was forced to take the same cov­er­age? Yes!
      Do I think any lan­guage in the bill forc­ing Con­gress to take the same cov­er­age as the rest of us would actu­ally make it through to a final ver­sion of the bill? No.

      Reply to this Comment
13. Bar­bara says:
    February 18th, 2010 at 11:03 am

    Why is this bill not avail­able to view? I googled it, I went to democ­rats congressmen/women’s web sites and they do not have it. I would truly like to read this bill because you all lie to glibly for me to trust what you say. So could I please have a site address to go to to view this Health Reform (I use this term loosely) bill HB3200
    Thank you

    Reply to this Comment
14. Bar­bara says:
    February 18th, 2010 at 11:09 am

    yes it will be dif­fer­ent how­ever, every time they redo it it becomes worse for the peo­ple. I think if the con­gress is going to reform health care they should join the rest of us. If we are sub­jected to it so should they.

    Reply to this Comment
15. Mark says:
    February 18th, 2010 at 11:34 am

    I sug­gest you try read­ing full posts and com­ments before you make start claim­ing peo­ple are lying. For exam­ple, if you’d bother to read through my entire post on HB3200; you would have found I linked to the ver­sion of the bill I used in my analy­sis of the let­ter pur­ported to have been writ­ten by a for­mer county judge from Texas. Since you missed the link, here it is again for your ben­e­fit: http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h3200/text

    Reply to this Comment
16. Mark says:
    February 18th, 2010 at 11:36 am

    All that I’ve heard about how they’re chang­ing does actu­ally make it sound like it will be worse. Worse in that the Amer­i­can peo­ple will get less pro­tec­tions and less cov­er­age under the newer ver­sions while the insur­ance com­pa­nies will get to make more & more prof­its (like the 56% increase in prof­its they squeezed out of the Amer­i­can peo­ple last year). Health care should never be about profit/loss but should be about qual­ity of life.

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