We must pass Obama's transparency rule!

No matter which side of the health care bill you are on, Obama's 72 hour transparency rule needs to be implemented.

Obama said during his campaign and again after he took office, that his administration would not hide anything from the public. He promised that all bills would be available for the public to review at least 72 hours before a vote.

So far he has not kept that promise. The Congress has passed, and he has signed into law, several bills and none have been made public in advance. In fact, on one bill the Democrats added a 300 page addendum after 1:00 a.m. on the morning of the vote. The bill passed and there is no way it was studied (or even read) by most of the legislators that voted for it - and Obama immediately signed it into law.

The result of these bills is that ACORN and several CEOs that had supported Obama's election received multi-million dollar pay-offs and our legislators have authorized over 9000 earmarks (which Obama also promised would not occur during his administration) funding such things as spending over one million dollars to build underpasses for turtles on a highway in Florida.

In each of these cases, when the payoffs and earmarks were made public AFTER they had been passed, President Obama publicly stated that he “DID NOT KNOW” that these things were in the bills that he signed into law. Either he is lying to us or he is negligent. Either one is atrocious.

With the importance of the health care bill, we need to hold him to his promise of transparency. Several times already the Republicans have submitted legislation to implement Obama's 72 hour rule and the Democrats have blocked it from even coming to a vote.

They have also blocked several Republican health care initiatives. They, along with Obama, have publicly stated many times that the Republicans have only complained and have not submitted any plans. THAT IS AN OUTRIGHT LIE! The Republican plans that have been submitted, though having several variations, contain too primary solutions:

1. Take the 15 million people that currently do not have insurance and add them to the existing Medicaid program. Though this program (run by the same government that is trying to establish Obamacare) is in financial disarray, they could easily use a small part of the multi-trillion dollars they are planning to spend on Obamacare to fix up Medicaid. With just 15 million of a population of 350 million needing care, this would be the most efficient.
2. Make lawyers and their clients that lose frivolous medical law suits pay back the costs doctors and medical institutions spend to defend themselves. Right now, the largest single expense in the medical field is lawsuits. It costs BILLIONS every years just to defend themselves from lawsuits. The sad part is that less than a third of these suits are legitimate and the lawyers that file them have no penalty when they lose – yet the defendants are out billions of dollars. Just by making the losing party pay the costs of the suit, it would bring down our medical costs dramatically. Unfortunate, most of the legislators are lawyers and they are blocking this change.

Both of these two plans address the issues that are being publicized as what is most needed – getting health care for the 15 million uninsured and bringing down medical costs. We currently have over 335 million people that are insured – most which like the plans they have. Under the Republican plan, these people will only benefit by the lower costs. The plan that is about to be debated will radically change health care as we know it.

We won't get into all the changes here, but there are many sources that I can point you too if you need them. What I do want to focus on is getting President Obama to keep one of his promises. If his 72 hour transparency rule was implemented, it would allow the public (and legislators) time to KNOW what is in the bill they are voting on. It would eliminate the last minute addendums that don't get read and we would have the chance to respond to our legislators our viewpoint and desires before they vote. After all, they are supposed to be working FOR us. How can they vote if they do not even know how we stand?

No matter which side of the bill you are on, Obama's 72 hour transparency rule needs to be passed. We need to contact the president and our legislators and get this done before they vote on destroying the greatest health care system in the world.