00 09/10/2009 15:40
UPDATE: US BISHOPS' STAND
ON HEALTH CARE REFORM


Here is the text of a letter from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops to each member of the US Congress stating their primary concerns regarding the health care legislation still being drafted by the legislators:





Just for the record, I will post these comments, even though they have nothing to do with the Church, except insofar as the bill would allow mandatory funding for abortion simply by not specifically prohibiting it.

The problem in all these discussions, so far, is that the public only gets to know selected items which the chattering classes choose to discuss. out of 4-5 versions pending in the House and the one version ready to be considered by the entire Senate, and that no one has seen a full version of any of these drafts [the Senate committee clearly says it does not have a draft bill, only a draft of the principal proposals to be made in the bill].

More importantly, although President Obama has talked endlessly and incessantly about his intended legislation, he himself has presented no draft of his own. In effect, all the discussion so far has been on hypotheticals - many of them plausible, possible and probable, of course, but the hypotheses have lacked clarity and specifics on key aspects, especially how it is to be financed.

The public debate over all the major legislation advocated by the Obama administration so far has revealed the shocking fact that few legislators really bother to read the bills that they vote upon, and even now, the Democrat-dominated House of Representatives has voted down every resolution asking for any draft bill to be posted on line at least 72 hours before a vote is taken.

Considering that the major working version of the House bill on health care reform is over 1,000 pages long, 72 hours is probably just enough for a major law firm with a hotshot team to do a preliminary screen of the bill for all the traps, loopholes and often unrelated insertions routinely worked into these bills.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 09/10/2009 15:56]