Major expansion of health care coverage was passed along with bailout

And if you’re not sickened that four days after the $700 billion bailout that was supposed to save the economy, they’re asking for another bailout, here’s something that is guaranteed both to shock and sicken. As reported in yesterday’s New York Times, attached to the bailout was a major piece of socialist-type legislation that the left have been trying unsuccessfully to pass for 12 years. It’s a law that requires employers and health plans to provide the same coverage for mental health problems as for physical, a law, the Times crows, that will “force sweeping changes in the workplace.” The Congress did not debate the measure, and the the media did not tell us that such a radical piece of legislation was being pushed through along with the bailout, which was considered so immediately urgent that no further debate or delay could be allowed.

Note the tone in which the article is written. There is no embarrassment over such an important bill having been passed in such a sneaky way, no implication that it ought at least be explained how a medical insurance bill got combined with a finance bailout bill. To the contrary, the Times reporter, Robert Pear, and the bill’s supporters are preening over it. The left thus shows their contempt for America. They’re proud when they pass radical legislation on an improper basis, because, from their point of view, America is such a rotten country that the only way you can get the right laws passed is by unconstitutional or undemocratic trickery; therefore trickery is good.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 07, 2008 11:29 AM | Send