Merry Christmas Eve y’all!

Guess what…? Our lovely Congress has just bestowed upon this nation a most wondrous gift of “universal” health care during this joyous season – a gift that will keep giving and taking.

Giving in the sense that never before have we seen such blatant kickbacks and special-interest deals to put another ol’ legislative “victory” on the mantel. Taking in the sense that it’ll be we taxpayers who will reap the long-term consequences of this “reform” through more taxes, loss of medical innovation, and (most importantly) the failure of enacting true, progressive revisions to a restraining, high-cost health care industry – an industry that’s for sure never been subject to an efficiently competitive market ever sense FDR’s wage ceilings, which first led to employer-dominated insurance packages to entice workers during such times of economic hindrances.

Let’s go with an example of giving – the Honorable Harry Reid on his legislative deal making:

I don’t even know if there is a Senator that doesn’t have something in this bill that was important to them. And if they don’t have something in it important to them, then it doesn’t speak well of them.

Well said Harry! Next time all of the senators will “pull a Nelson” and hold out on giving any support to a Democrat-initiative so that they can get their juicy kickback. Apologies to Senator Bayh; at least you got some extra time in front of cameras for your “opposition” through hesitation aka just enough to placate your constituents. I mean Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska got the “air time,” the “honor” of being the make-or-break vote, and the exemption for Nebraska to not have to pay any of the additional costs for Medicaid expansion ($100 million). Oh, wait, I forgot the approximate $6.7 billion in health insurance kickbacks to Nebraska-based Mutual of Omaha. Don’t forget a waiver of the insurance fee for Nebraska Blue Cross/Blue Shield as well. The icing on the cake? Nelson’s blatant admission on the Senate floor of his bought vote:

Three Senators came up to me just now on the floor and said, “Now we understand what you did. We’ll be seeking this funding too.”

Another gift from Harry Reid’s toy bag of political swindling and Tom Foolery: Senator Bill Nelson (I see a pattern here) of Florida, concerned about staying popular with his old-timer constituency in the midst of a bill that takes $400 billion from seniors, got an exemption for Florida seniors currently on medicare benefits from losing them – a $3-$5 billion gift in kind that has a price tag of “priceless” by ensuring those continual votes, while other American seniors are affected.

But, realistically, this whole sham of political theater and backdoor deals for health care “reform” do not wrap up a gift that quite keeps on giving. When costs (health procedure fees, insurance pricing, and taxpayer demands) weigh their due financial onus, most of these deals will have to be cut out like cancer; most of the the deals just serve anyway as short-term benefits (taxpayer detriments) for a long-term failure. And so it’s the taxpayer who will bear much of the fiscal and policy consequences in both the short-term and long-term.

I mean honestly! What the hell is going on?! It’s been 65 or so years since a statist form of health “reform” has been offered and it’s taken this long to perfect a real governmental screw-up. The CBO has written numerous reports on potential negative fallout from this bill. One of them, for example, focused on the passed rebate program, which targets the administrative expenses of particularly small group and individual market insurance companies (kickback to big biz) as these smaller companies have their profits (potential for pricing cuts) gutted by the government. Another case-in-point involves how the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services becomes an unchecked, unaccountable Nurse Mildred Ratched with the ability to decide when Medicare will only pay for a cheaper “alternative” treatment all while being exempted from judicial review as patients have no right to sue the government.

Yet, it’s easy for these details to get all lost in such a large bill all while our courageous, senatorial representatives are championing the cause of health care “reform” based on firm principal and concern for the many disadvantaged. in our country But the list of discrepancies, special-interest deal making, and fiscal fallout became too apparent already to have been ignored. And so we get to the crux of why this bill passed. It was not just the “gifts” Democrats received that brought the troops around for an “aye” vote. As left-leaning economist Robert Kuttner recently (so beautifully and unabashedly) admitted on Bill Moyers’ Journal, the Left and all Democrat senators have an obligation to support this health care bill – though riddled with shortcomings, false promises, and much catering to industry – because of the political necessity to win in 2010. Good thing many of the bill’s provisions don’t go into effect until afterward. I mean who cares? It’s not like this bill affects almost a fifth of our country’s economy, will have devastating fiscal consequences, will still ignore many of the disadvantaged, and will limit the opportunity to expand choice and a more effective manner of lowering health costs. The exigency for political expediency wins the day. Now we know what is really meant by the Democrats when they claim “victory” with this bill.

Though I’d like to say most of the Democrats who voted “yes” had nice intentions, a good number of them should be receiving coal in their stockings every Christmas now. And the American taxpayer, well I guess we’ll just have to hope for change to this current bill as we’ll be receiving a much larger “wish list” from the government sooner or later otherwise every April 15th; except, this wish list has has to be seen through – regardless if government’s been naughty or nice.