In the Dark of the Night

After a day of posturing and pontificating for the CSPAN cameras your non-representing elected representatives did the dirty deed last night. Significant in the vote is that no less than 38 Democrats jumped the shark onto the right side of the island. At least some of them have a sense of self-preservation.

But What About the Uninsured?

Notice that neat circumlocution? Remember how we talked about 40 million uninsured Americans a few days ago? Then when examined and we removed the illegals and those who could insure themselves but chose as free Americans to not do so the number went down to about 25 million. Now the the bleat is about 96% being covered. Which leaves 4% or 12 million uninsured! In order to achieve that grand goal we are going to screw up the best healthcare in the world and effectively damage the medical system of the nation along with the economy for the foreseeable future. Great job guys.

Want to know how much "stuff" is buried in the depths of the 2000 pages?

Help For Community Organizers AKA Acorn

There are some great requirements there couched in the language of diversity and opportunity and equality and that sort of thing:

• Sec. 399V (p. 1422) provides for grants to community "entities" with no required qualifications except having "documented community activity and experience with community healthcare workers" to "educate, guide, and provide experiential learning opportunities" aimed at drug abuse, poor nutrition, smoking and obesity. "Each community health worker program receiving funds under the grant will provide services in the cultural context most appropriate for the individual served by the program."

Don't you just love that "cultural context"? Or maybe you like the establishment of a preferential system of opportunity? Can that possibly be Constitutional?

• Secs. 2521 and 2533 (pp. 1379 and 1437) establishes racial and ethnic preferences in awarding grants for training nurses and creating secondary-school health science programs. For example, grants for nursing schools should "give preference to programs that provide for improving the diversity of new nurse graduates to reflect changes in the demographics of the patient population." And secondary-school grants should go to schools "graduating students from disadvantaged backgrounds including racial and ethnic minorities."

Preferences by race and ethnicity for receiving federal tax dollars? Graduating students from disadvantaged backgrounds? Improving diversity of nurse graduates? Hasn't the Supreme Court covered stuff like this in the Bakke decision of thirty years ago?

This only gets worse.