A Health Care Vote - Before the Bill is Written?

As we continue to track developments involving Congressional efforts to revamp our nation's health care system, our legislative affairs team has just given me a very disturbing report.  It appears the Senate Finance Committee is preparing to vote on a health care "plan" - before they even write the bill.

Thats right, the Senate Finance Committee, the fifth and final committee with jurisdiction over the government takeover of healthcare that is being debated, is in session as we speak and will soon vote to approve the bill.  You can watch live coverage of the Committee debate here. Theres one major problem: the members of the Finance Committee havent yet written the bill, and they dont intend to do so before they vote.

Instead, Chairman Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) has released a proposal written in conceptual text.  You can view that here. That proposal is the bill that is being debated and amended in the Committee.  However, it is the legislative text that will become law, and as a lawyer, it is the legislative text that I must read in order to determine the impact.  The conceptual text is just as the name implies - a concept.  There is no way to ensure that the legislative text will actually accomplish what is in the conceptual text unless we can first read the language.  But the Finance Committee does not even plan to write that legislative text until after they vote on the bill.

While the Finance Committee may have conducted business in this troubling manner before - it is completely unacceptable to approve such a massive proposal that impacts nearly 20% of our economy without giving Senators and the American people an opportunity to read the exact words that will become law.

I am even more concerned after the Finance Committee expressly rejected an effort to correct this glaring problem.  Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) offered an amendment to ensure that the legislative text would be available for 72 hours before a vote was called on the measure(you can read the amendment on page 279 of the committee report here).  The Committee rejected that amendment.  I am very concerned that this will result in the Committee approving a bill without any assurance of what it will actually accomplish.

We will continue to make your voice heard, and will clearly communicate that it is extremely inappropriate to vote on a bill before it is even written.