Morning Bell: Heritage President Ed Feulner on Health Care

Conn Carroll / June 18, 2009

This Monday, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) delivered a major dose of reality to Capitol Hill, affixing a $1 trillion price tag to the Kennedy-Dodd health care plan. Supporters of the Kennedy-Dodd approach then complained that the CBO only scored an incomplete version of the bill and Dodd-Kennedy staffers “were scrambling to give the CBO something closer to the final legislation.” By their own admission, their legislation is incomplete; you would think that would give Dodd-Kennedy supporters pause before pushing the bill through committee.

Nope. Yesterday they began their first markup hearing on the bill, prompting Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) to observe: “This is the most incredible markup I’ve ever seen in my entire time at the United States Senate and in Congress. It is a joke if we run through this stack of papers here.”

The sorry state of our nation’s health care system is no laughing matter. Serious reform is needed. But we should be honest about which direction different types of reforms will take our country. To that end, Heritage Foundation President Ed Feulner has written an open letter to the President and Congress on health care. First, Feulner pierces President Obama’s health care rhetoric: (more…)