San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial

A recipe for ruin

Senate must fix House’s botch of a health bill

Tuesday, November 10, 2009 at 12:05 a.m.

The deliberative process that led to the House’s 220-215 adoption of a nearly 2,000-page bill overhauling the U.S. health care system was a disgrace. Not only did Speaker Nancy Pelosi block hearings on many key elements of the bill, she broke her promise to post the full measure online for 72 hours before the vote.

But even if Pelosi had kept her word, that wouldn’t have changed the ultimate outcome. The speaker and the great majority of House Democracts – including Reps. Susan Davis of San Diego and Bob Filner of Chula Vista – simply didn’t care that a bill with a 10-year, $1.2 trillion price tag was rife with unexamined problems. It was time to make history, according to these Democrats’ talking points, so they did.

Now it is up to responsible moderate Democrats in the Senate, starting with California’s Dianne Feinstein, to clean up the House’s enormous mess.

They must challenge the folly of pretending a vast expansion of the government’s role in health care can largely be funded by vague promises of future cuts in Medicare and Medicaid. They must push for an honest debate about how allowing companies to choose a government-run “public optionâ€