Instapundit points out that there is no plan, after having read Robert Reich’s column.
Reich’s column, titled How to Fight Health Care Fearmongers and Demagogues, actually asks the question
Why are these meetings brimming with so much anger? Because Republican Astroturfers have joined the same old right-wing broadcast demagogues that have been spewing hate and fear for years, to create a tempest.
But why are they getting away with it? Why aren’t progressives—indeed, why aren’t ordinary citizens—taking the meetings back?
And he has the answer (emphasis added):
Mainly because there’s still no healthcare plan. All we have are some initial markups from several congressional committees, which differ from one another in significant ways. The White House’s is waiting to see what emerges from the House and Senate before insisting on what it wants, maybe in conference committee.
Liberty Council (via Babalu) has read what is HR3200:
We recently saw an overview of the healthcare bill being debated in Congress (HR 3200). We found the overview so alarming that we doubted its accuracy, so the staff in our D.C. office compared it to the voluminous bill.
What they found astonished us so much that we had to share it with you today. You can read our updated and revised overview of HR 3200 and you will be alarmed, too. (Here are links to the PDF and html versions.)
You can also read the text of HR 3200 – directly from a government website – to see for yourself how dangerous this government healthcare takeover would be.
Of course, it is not enough to be alarmed and do nothing! Congress is going on recess soon, but you can be assured that the liberals behind this bill will not be at rest. They will hold public meetings and try to convince their constituents that government healthcare is the only option.
It is time to visit the Senators and Representatives in their local offices in your state. Take copies of our document on HR 3200 with you so they can understand your concerns.
You can locate your Senators and Representatives offices online.
You can also find more information about this bill online, including voting history and amendments and track its future moves through Congress.
Read more about the consequences of this bill in Matt Barber’s article “Is There a Co-Pay with Forced Abortion?” Barber is Director of Cultural Affairs for Liberty Counsel and Associate Dean with Liberty University School of Law.
Mind you, even after you go through the trouble of reading through all of those links, you still won’t know what’s on the bill because the draft is not final and it’s not the only draft.
The White House itself “is waiting to see what emerges from the House and Senate”; all the same, the White House wants us to accept whatever, on faith.
Clearly Robert Reich finds nothing wrong with insisting that the public acquiesce docilely to a massive revamping of 1/5 of the American economy involving life and death decisions on their own health, sight unseen.
Instapundit explains it for him,
Reich is admitting that despite all the Administration hoopla, there’s still no plan. Or, possibly, that the White House has a plan, but won’t tell us what it is. And yet the people who don’t want to see a bill — some bill, doing who-knows-what — rammed through in the dead of night are somehow the ones who are ignorant and being manipulated. Right.
Indeed.
And, by the way (in case you missed it in yesterday’s roundup),
Under both the House and Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee bills released to the public, the Internal Revenue Service will play a key role in monitoring and enforcing health care mandates against individual taxpayers.
What could possibly go wrong?
It is revolutionary change that Obama brings! No, wait. I think a better description is coup d’état. How does one use coup d’état as an adjective?
Reuch seem to be suggesting that we put the cart before the horse. Let the bill become law then say that is not what we want. Seems to me if your are putting a bill together you would want input to what the people want, not what ACORN wants.
No only does Barack Obama has no health care plan, he has no plan. With Obama there is no there. Obama is a man devoid of education, with no leadership record and no record of accomplisment, aside from winning eletions. Obama’s resume could not get him hired to manage a 7-Eleven.
“The White House’s is waiting to see what emerges from the House and Senate before insisting on what it wants, maybe in conference committee.”
There it is, right in front of your noses, and you still call it “Obama’s.” No wonder you guys are such losers.
You are absolutely correct. There is no plan. The whole effort is a mass of confusion. At this point, although the debate and spin continue, this bill is essentially dead from an emotional and mandate perspective, even if some version gets passed. Whether it ultimately proves to be of any benefit to society, or a detriment, will take years, if not decades, to appreciate.
This bill, and virtually anything that might be done to improve our healthcare system, involves too much complexity with which we are emotionally motivated to deal. In addition, there are too many factions with entrenched economic and/or financial interests to permit it to become a true health initiative.
There’s been too much arguing about the details. People can not describe in 2 or 3 sentences the conceptual parameters of the effort and what it is supposed to accomplish. Unfortunately, people can describe how they feel about it in 1 or 2 words, and that’s not good. And that’s not to mention the elements which have whipped up hysteria by suggesting, with certainty, what will occur once the final product (which does not yet exist) emerges.
If either side of the debate has to work this hard arguing about something which theoretically should improve the lives of the masses of people, there’s a big problem.
Even more so than how something is done, people are interested in results, not the details. And once again, as is frequently the case with much of human processing, the facts don’t really matter. How people view the world, what they value, and what they want, matters.
And there is nothing collaborative in nature about that. Factor in the strong individualistic American DNA, and this effort is emotionally toast.