Shell games in the Senate for ObamaCare describes how a separate bill will undo major cost reductions in the Baucus bill, even though the two bills weren’t considered together by the Congressional Budget Office when it evaluated implications for the deficit.

Why Democrats’ Health Care Overhaul May Die points out that universal coverage is so expensive that it can’t happen without unpopular new taxes.

Critical Condition, from the National Review Online says:

The problem with Obamacare is not insufficient governmental force; the problem is that the Democrats are pursuing the wrong goal. They are desperate to enact something they can call “universal coverage” without any coherent plan to slow the pace of rising costs. In that context, a new entitlement for subsidized insurance is exceedingly expensive, which is why the sponsors try to hide some of the costs behind mandates, hidden taxes, compulsion, and insurance regulation. However, as they are now finding out, there’s no free lunch here. Someone has to pay for it all. It’s just a question of who and how much.

Both We’re Going to Let You Die, in the Wall Street Journal, and The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes, in Pajamas Media discuss Robert Reich’s 2007 speech to UC Berkeley students explaining why politicians have trouble telling the truth about health care reform – you can’t have something for nothing.

A follow up question to that conclusion: is what we are getting better than what we have now?

These are our representatives; we should require them to read the entire health care bill (when the significant details are worked out) and to explain its every implication to their constituents before they vote for it.

This fact-checking commentary on Obama’s health care reform appeal found the assertions in his speech less than accurate. Congressman Joe Wilson received a lot of media attention for his callout (too many links to pick from here; I didn’t start collecting). He was technically correct because the bill as written contained no enforcement mechanism for excluding illegal immigrants (after the fallout from Wilson’s callout, Senators reconvened to make sure it would!).

An aspect of the proposed legislation that concerns this editor is the enforcement mechanism for the rest of us! In Health Care Reform equals more power to IRS? Macedoniaonline warns that health care reform, as currently envisioned by Democratic leaders, would be built on the foundation of an expanded and more intrusive IRS. The Washington Examiner concludes that

So far, there has been little substantive public debate about the integral role of the IRS in nearly every aspect of the various national health care proposals. But people who are closely involved with the process are deeply concerned about what they view as a massive, and in some senses unprecedented, expansion of the Internal Revenue Service.

The federal government instituted an inconvenient and intrusive process for screening every commercial airline passenger after September 11, 2001. How many terrorists have been caught this way? How many people determined to defraud the federal health care reimbursement system will be caught by a bureaucratic screening system entailing massive loss of privacy foisted on law-abiding taxpayers?

Representatives should explain these provisions in detail to their constituents, in mailings, on their websites, and in town hall briefings on the final legislation.

I’ll repeat what I posted before: all members of Congress should be required to abide by the health care coverage and reporting terms they impose on the rest of us.