Majority Leader Harry Reid announced on the Senate floor Thursday, that the Senate Finance Committee will vote on its long-awaited health care bill next Tuesday. The health care reform is predicted to cost $829 billion over the next ten years, this budget was put together by nonpartisan budget analysts. Although this number sounds like a major hit to the U.S. economy it would actually save around $80 billion during the ten year period. Senator Max Baucus, who has been in the news recently about his own version of the health care reform, said his bill would cost roughly $900 billion over a ten year period. Baucus’s plan has been discredited by most politicians including those in the Democratic party.
With such a high cost on this bill, much debate has come about, including a new one that Republicans are accusing the Obama administration of trying to add more on to the proposal. Sen. David Vitter, R-Louisiana, said he was "afraid that part of the strategy from the Obama administration and their allies on the health care bill is to change the target so quickly and to compress the debate time as we go down the path that there is not going to be full opportunity to digest the final version of what we're voting on." Republicans believe that Obama is using this current plant to get it past the finance committee and that he will eventually add more to it that will raise the cost. Most people believe that the current plan is the only one that will remain under a 1 trillion dollar cost.
I believe the current proposal is the best we have seen so far. If the finance committee approves this, it is on the right path of making it all the way through the house. I would hope that Obama would not add more to the plan that would make it cost more because I don’t think our country and economy could afford it right now.
This article can be found here: http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/10/07/health.care/index.html
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I defiantly agree with you that this is the best bill that has been put into legislation so far. The main goal of the health care reform is to insure the uninsured of America. It is going to impossible to complete this task without having any costs. The estimated cost of $829 billion dollars may seem like a lot, but President Obama is trying to make these costs come from systems that are not efficiently run, such as Medicare. These cuts to social programs may already be reducing too many benefits, so it is essential that President Obama keep these cuts to a minimum. Although Republicans argue that Obama is using this current plan to get it past the finance committee, I believe that if this bill is passed, the President will not be able to make any more cost increases. These costs are extremely high, but the outcome that will come out of this bill will reward millions of Americans with insurance.
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