I made the "mistake" of checking out the WhiteHouse.gov "Health Insurance Reform Reality Check" web site today. While there, I noticed a misleading title: "Congress did not vote to exempt themselves from reform". Watching the video, it was clear, Linda Douglass is clearly trying to deceive the poor woman asking the question with very much a non-answer.
This lead me to post the following at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck/contact today:
in "Congress did not vote to exempt themselves from reform" (http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck/491) you counter with saying "... and there has not been any such vote". While that may be technically true, as the Health Care Bill has not yet been voted on, your response is very misleading.
In the Senate version of the Health Care Bill (http://help.senate.gov/BAI09A84_xml.pdf), you will find on page 115 lines 22 - 24 that "Members of Congress" are specifically excluded because they are covered by "Federal employees health benefits program" (http://uscode.house.gov/download/pls/05C89.txt).
Given this, it is quite clear that Congress intends to exempt themselves from "reform". Can you not admit this? I challenge you to "come clean" on this issue.
Any time that Congress exempts themselves from a Bill, it is a clear admission that the Bill is flawed and should not be passed. Given that members of Congress are the employees of the people, Congress must not be exempt! If the Bill is good enough for the general public, it's good enough for the members of Congress!
-Bob
-Bob
