Transparency

If “health care reform” is such a critical issue, why is it that the proposals being debated in Congress do not take effect (except for the tax increases they include) until 2013? Why is nobody debating the implementation date? Why is there such an urgency to pass a bill (first, one must be passed before the August recess; now, one must be passed before the end of the year) that does not take effect until 2013?

It seems to me to be transparently obvious that the proposed changes will have a negative effect on health care in this country. If it were envisioned that the proposed changes would have a positive effect, wouldn’t our politicians want the positive effects to start sooner rather than later? Shouldn’t our politicians prefer to be able to run for re-election on the basis of the actual, current positive effects of the bill than on the basis of the perceived, future positive effects of the bill?

The fact that our politicians plan to run in both the 2010 mid-term Congressional elections and the 2012 Presidential election on the strength of the perceptions of a bill that will not even be in effect tells me that they know and don’t care that the proposed changes will have a negative effect on health care in this country.