President Barack Obama signed sweeping health care reform into law on Tuesday, following Sunday’s U.S. House of Representatives vote by 219 Democrats, including Southampton’s Tim Bishop, approving the legislation.
When the bill passed the Senate in December, Mr. Bishop was not in favor of it, but he said on Monday that he was satisfied with changes made to the bill using the legislative procedure called reconciliation.
He pointed out that he had also voted yes for the health care bill the House passed in November.
“I was a ‘lean-yes’ this time, but I had a couple of issues that were of paramount importance to me in terms of getting things right for New York and getting things right financially,” he said.
While the original House bill would have saved New York money, the Senate bill would have cost the state $1 billion in the first year, Mr. Bishop noted. “I was withholding my commitment to vote yes or no on the bill until I saw how New York was treated, and New York was treated very fairly in the reconciliation package,” he said.
Reconciliation resulted in a $1.3 billion savings for New York in the first year, and the savings will escalate over time, he said.
Mr. Bishop said that while his office received calls and letters from all over the country urging him to oppose the health care legislation, the feedback from his constituents in the 1st Congressional District was nearly evenly split—with slightly more in favor.
“I don’t know how it will affect my reelection,” he admitted. “I do know that I made the judgment that I made based on what I think is in the best interest of our district.”
His Republican challengers in the 2010 race sharply criticized Mr. Bishop’s vote.
“It’s really just disappointing that Congressman Bishop would side with Washington, D.C., and San Francisco guys instead of Suffolk County guys, and I think we really need representation in Congress that’s going to do the right thing to lower health care cost in the right way—not with some massive government takeover of one-sixth of the U.S. economy,” candidate Chris Cox of Westhampton Beach and New York City said on Wednesday.
Mr. Cox, grandson of former President Richard Nixon and son of New York State Republican Committee Chairman Ed Cox, went on to say that “the bill strong-arms individuals into buying insurance, and that’s the heavy hand of government getting involved.”
“We should come up with common sense solutions, not ones that are forcing individuals into buying something they might not necessarily want,” he said.
Projections estimate the legislation will insure 32 million currently uninsured Americans by 2019. Mr. Bishop said the costs of the newly insured will primarily be paid for in two ways: an increase in the Medicare withholding tax on families that make $250,000 a year or more, and a tax on “Cadillac” health insurance plans—expensive insurance policies that are part of employees’ compensation packages but not subject to taxation.
Mr. Bishop said he was concerned with how the Senate bill defined “Cadillac” plans, but the reconciliation package ensured the tax would only affect very expensive, high-premium plans.
Randy Altschuler of St. James, who is also vying for the GOP nomination, said passing the health care bill using reconciliation—which allows a simple majority of the Senate to pass House amendments to a bill—was unfair to the American people.
“This is a legislation that is affecting one-sixth of the economy, and the fact that it wasn’t done through a real vote just shows it’s business as usual,” he said. “This is the kind of shenanigans that you see in Washington, and, frankly, that’s why you need to bring in outsiders like myself and other candidates around the country, who aren’t professional politicians. In business, you can never get away with this kind of nonsense.”
Mr. Bishop defended the decision to use reconciliation, which was created in 1974. “Seventy-two percent of the time that reconciliation has been used since it was first established as a mechanism, it has been used when the Republicans were in control of Congress,” he said. “So it’s both disingenuous and hypocritical for the Republicans to be screaming now that this is an illegitimate practice, when they, in fact, have used it almost three-quarters of the time that it has been used.”
Reconciliation was designed to drive down deficits, and in this instance, it did, Mr. Bishop said, adding that it is one of the reasons he voted in favor of the bill.
The Congressional Budget Office reported last week that the health care overhaul would reduce the national deficit by $143 billion over the first 10 years, followed by $1.2 trillion over the second decade.
“That’s not a Democratic number or a Republican number,” Mr. Bishop said. “That’s the Congressional Budget Office, which is a nonpartisan arm of the Congress.”
Remember that there was much opposition to the 19th Amendment as well.
Thank You.
I would caution the wild-eyed partisans in the Republican Party and their candidates from away who are moving here simply to run for a seat in Congress on the East End of Suffolk County (the recent college grad Chris Cox, billionaire Randy Altschuler) to get their facts straight and be honest in their debate. Tea party types are a flash in the pan and do not withstand the scrutiny they deserve.
Less government, means less regulation. Less regulation invites malfeasance in like Dracula.
For the republicans to just say no because they want Obama to fail is a slap in the face of the American people who voted for their representatives to participate ...more in government, not only to play at politics.
When you have coverage, it is easy to deny those who don't ... wake up friends!
You clearly want to make this some sort of class battle. You have a deep resentment against what you see as "rich liberals" but this bill will help the poor, not the rich. It was George Bush and the republicans who gave 2 trillion dollars in unpaid for tax cuts to the rich. An activist republican court that granted ...more corporations the same rights as individuals. If you are fighting for liberty and equality then you are supporting the wrong party.
Please avoid the Polemics.
By the way our little government was bankrupt and those Founding Fathers worked and fought to increase ...more the size and power of the central government, and you use the SAME arguments as those who opposed them and our United States Constitution.
" I am pleased that the reconciliation process corrected several deal-breakers for me in the Senate bill, notably the side deals worked out for states such as Nebraska and a provision related to Medicaid funding that would have cost New York several billion dollars. Another important factor was the nonpartisan ...more Congressional Budget Office’s analysis that estimates this bill will reduce the long term debt by over $1.3 trillion."
The man has the courage of his convictions, pure and simple. You don't think he knows this vote could hurt him in the next election? This country was founded by men like him. .
As ever, he has earned my full support and will most definitely be receiving my vote come November.
Tim Bishop is ...more an elected representative whose vote reflects the desires of those who put him into office. That is what he was elected to do and, despite threats and lies from people like you, he has done it.
"The orginal goal of helath care reform was to improve care, reduce costs and reduce the number of uninsured's. I think most educated americans agree that these are all noble goals and are in favor of accomplishing them However an independent bi partisan study by the Congressional Budget office shows that all propsed plans so far with a public option will reduce the quality of care and greatly increase the cost of ...more care." ????
so now that the CBO judges that this bill will actually reduce the long term debt by 1.3 trillion dollars (as per Congressman Bishop's quote in my earlier post) you suddenly change your mind? Please explain. By the way, please show respect when referring to a United States Congressman.
Bad politician. No more votes for you.
Lets face it he SOLD OUT
Make sure we all remember it at election time
SAY GOOD BYE TIM!!!!!!!!!!!
and he wounders how it will affect his re-election.
GIVE ME A BREAK
DID YOU READ IT TIM OR JUST MAKE A BACK OFFICE DEAL TO SELL US OUT????
Technically, via economic hypothesis, even if you don't have conventional debt, the fact that your income cannot support your basic needs is debt. You simply don't have those basic needs, because you can't afford them.
We call it "low-income", or "poverty".
Thomas Jefferson, letter to Joseph Milligan, April 6, 1816
I want to spread the wealth around. - Barack Obama to Joe the Plumber, ...more October 2008
"make it".
You can thank those who have "capitalized" on their own fortune, and luck to excess for that.
see below clip from a Report....
IRS agents verify if you have “acceptable” health care coverage;
IRS has the authority to fine you up to $2,250 or 2 percent of your income (whichever is
greater) for failure to prove that you have purchased “minimum essential coverage”;
IRS can confiscate your tax refund;
IRS audits are likely to increase;
IRS will need up to $10 billion to administer the new health care program this decade;
IRS may need to hire as many as 16,500 additional auditors, agents and other employees
to investigate and collect billions in new taxes from Americans; and
Nearly half of all these new individual mandate taxes will be paid by Americans earning
less than 300 percent of poverty ($66,150 for a family of four).
How's that?
http://republicans.waysandmeans.house.gov/UploadedFiles/IRS_Power_Report.pdf
Our children will be paying for that!
Like I stated earlier, the Founding Fathers created our Constitution to avert disaster from a weak ineffective central government under the Articles of Confederation. In addition, the founders provided flexibility in our government to meet the needs of the new times and challenges like now.
You use this rhetoric to try an advance your partisan agenda and it is simply wrong!
Thanks, SHNative
I can't quite go along, however, with those who say this was a courageous vote on Tim Bishop's part. It's not my intention to take anything away from this good, smart and moral stand by the Congressman, ...more but let's try to be accurate.
It would have been a courageous vote if Tim Bishop had paid any attention to all the Tea Party and other opposition demonstrators over the last several months, but he knew that they were just so much background noise, diminished even more by the low, racist, homophobic, insulting tone that many of them adopted.
It would have been a courageous vote if Tim Bishop had paid any attention to all the grim warnings of retribution in the November elections, several of which we see above, but he knows that he has over seven months to inform the people (many of whom already know it) about the new law's many direct and immediate benefits for them, including:
-- Closing the doughnut hole so people won't pay exorbitant amounts for prescription drugs.
-- Stopping insurance companies from cancelling policies when people get sick.
-- Allowing young people to be covered by their parents' policies up to age 26.
-- Limits on premium increases by insurance companies.
-- Stopping insurance companies from revoking coverage because of pre-existing conditions.
-- Tax cuts for small businesses to help them get health insurance for their employees.
And the list goes on, plus which, it will ultimately reduce the deficit by more than a trillion dollars. When the people see all this, they won't punish Tim Bishop at the polls. Far from it, they will reward him, and this vote for health care reform will prove to be one of the most politically astute votes he has ever cast. Indeed, the Democrats generally, if they know how to run with this and get the word out, reminding people that Republicans did nothing but stand in the way, should really profit from health care in November, maybe even offsetting the traditional loss of seats by a President's party in the midterm election.
Taking a lunch hour to contribute to a forum is enjoyable from my point of view.
It's the democrats way to pay for the lazy people, so i expect to see you at the other fundraiser for the underemployed.
I get the feeling you would be footing a good percentage of the hospital bill, on top of your premiums.
I'd have to do some research, though...
I think most of you supporters of this bill dont really know what you are going to get.
Health care reform is ...more needed, it has to cut the overall cost of healthcare to make it affordable. Not distribute wealth to cover uninsured.
Now someone can tell me that they beilve at any of these CLOWNS like Bishop really did read every page of this bill.
Mostly on the parts of insurers, and pharmacuetical companies who put profit BEFORE people.
You are not entitled to speak for what the founders wanted or did not want!
WOW. Free speech is next?
What will insurance cost you? Try this link to the Washington Post's cost calculator http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/what-health-bill-means-for-you
In the US poverty level is considered $22,000/year for a family of four. This calculator shows that these people will be eligible for medicare - they will not be paying $5,900/month - that statement is patently ...more false.
Lies benefit none of us.
The plans available for the self employed would save me no more than $200/month if I qualified.
Where does the calculator factor in the lowering of premiums by an average of $2,500 per family per year as promised over and over and over and over again by O?
Tim needs to get the heck out of our hair and retire now, don't wait for November.
Socialized Medicine will not work......
Some ideas do indeed die hard. For the greater part of the last half century, a number of our more “enlightened” — that is, more socialist-minded — neighbors, such as Canada and the European nations, have nationalized their medical industries and ever since have been struggling to live up to their promise of “health insurance and quality health care” for all. Huge waiting lists ...more for care and visitations with specialists, a lack of sophisticated medical equipment, rising costs (which must be met by rising taxes), and a general increase in dissatisfaction with government-run health care are typical in all countries where the government, literally, calls the shots.
The first error of those who promote “national health care” is their complete inability to accept that nothing in life is certain. Just because a law is passed guaranteeing “quality medical care for all” doesn’t mean it will happen — though this is certainly a heretical view in today’s climate of government worship. No matter how much they may want it, leftists will have to accept that regardless of the system in place, someone, somewhere, will go without the care he needs. Conventional “wisdom” has maintained that at least under a government system more people will have care than otherwise. But after 50 years of experimentation, the jury is in: Socialized medicine simply cannot deliver the goods.
So the only question is, what system has shown itself capable of best distributing the greatest amount of any good or service to the greatest number of people, at the highest quality and lowest price? The answer is the free market. Medical care is no different from any other commodity. In order to be most efficiently and widely distributed, it requires the unfettered signals of supply and demand, lest it fall victim to socialism’s standard shortcomings: bureaucratization, rationing, rising costs, overproduction (in some areas), underproduction (in others), and eventual failure
Try turining the channel from Fox for a couple on minutes each day to get real news.
Again, the bill is not socialized health care!
If its not socialized health care than what is it.
WAKE UP
Second if it were true that socialized meds , or anything else, were made better by socialization, the CCCP would be the World's greatest power. Instead it dissovled back into Russia, etc,..,
$1.3 trillion - Defecit savings by 2030 Democrats claim will result from health care reform,
$9 billion - Projected annual costs in 1990 when Medicare was enacted in 1965.
$67 billion - Actual cost of Medicare in 1990.
$472 million - Projected annual cost in 2008 when Massachusetts health care reform was enacted in 2006.
$628 million - Actual 2008 cost of Massachsetts health reform.
Source: weeklystandard.com
Anyone notice ...more a pattern or want to guess how fulll of crap the dems claims of $1.3 trillion in savings will be?
Well that is what we are all going to be doing for 3 years of higher taxes before this starts.
Lets not forget the VP's remark that "This is a big F****** Deal" What a CLOWN!!
and the SMILE on BARRY'S face when it was said to him.
You all better wake up because the SO-CALLED Pres. and VP are trying to RUIN THIS COUNTRY.
From the Washington Times:
President Obama's fiscal 2011 budget will generate nearly $10 trillion in cumulative budget deficits over the next 10 years, $1.2 trillion more than the administration projected, and raise the federal debt to 90 percent of the nation's economic output by 2020, the Congressional Budget Office reported Thursday.
In its 2011 budget, which the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) ...more released Feb. 1, the administration projected a 10-year deficit total of $8.53 trillion. After looking it over, CBO said in its final analysis, released Thursday, that the president's budget would generate a combined $9.75 trillion in deficits over the next decade.
Nice picture of Bishop. Looks like a kid who got caught in the cookie jar
HOW FITTING
Why do you Tea-baggers love the insurance company’s soooo much? They would just assume let you die if you neglected to initial subsection 42 on page 12 of your incredibly expensive insurance plan that you have been paying for 31 years……and yet you defend them.
Secondly, SHNative, if these private insurance companies are sooooo bad, why are we being forced to purchase from them? The rules and stipulations set by the gov't will ultimately bankrupt the entire industry, at which point the gov't will enact a gov't ...more run program it deems "essential" due to the emergency situation this legislation will cause.
Those with caring hearts "get it" and understand the real debate is between the "haves" and the "have nots".
Yes, Congressman Bishop will be re-elected handily because he works hard for the East End and because he does the correct thing and fights against the kind of injustice that hurt so many families when it came to having access to health care in America.
12, 2009 DURING THE
"NETWORK SPECIAL ON HEALTH CARE".... OBAMA WAS ASKED:
"MR PRESIDENT WILL YOU AND YOUR FAMILY GIVE UP YOUR CURRENT HEALTH
CARE PROGRAM
AND JOIN THE NEW 'UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE PROGRAM' THAT THE REST OF US
WILL BE ON ????"
THERE WAS A STONEY SILENCE AS OBAMA IGNORED THE QUESTION AND CHOSE NOT
TO ANSWER IT !!!
IN ADDITION, A NUMBER OF SENATORS ...more WERE ASKED THE SAME QUESTION AND
THEIR RESPONSE
WAS."WE WILL THINK ABOUT IT." AND THEY DID. IT WAS ANNOUNCED TODAY
ON THE NEWS THAT THE
"KENNEDY HEALTH CARE BILL" WAS WRITTEN INTO THE NEW HEALTH CARE REFORM
INITIATIVE
ENSURING THAT THAT CONGRESS WILL BE 100% EXEMPT !
SO, THIS GREAT NEW HEALTH CARE PLAN THAT IS GOOD FOR YOU AND I... IS
NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR OBAMA, HIS FAMILY OR CONGRESS...??
WE (THE AMERICAN PUBLIC) NEED TO STOP THIS PROPOSED DEBACLE ASAP !!!!
THIS IS TOTALLY WRONG'
PERSONALLY, I CAN ONLY ACCEPT A UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE OVERHAUL THAT
EXTENDS TO EVERYONE...
NOT JUST US LOWLY CITIZENS... WHILE THE WASHINGTON "ELITE" KEEP RIGHT ON WITH THEIR GOLD-PLATED HEALTH CARE COVERAGES.
WHAT???
The Republic has a CONSTITUTION???
Amendment 28
Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United
States that does not apply equally to the Senators or Representatives,
and Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators or
Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the
United States .
Imagine what would happen if everybody passed this around?
However, the e-mail was reported as "mostly false" by the urban legends website Snopes: http://www.snopes.com/politics/medical/network.asp
Doctors are setting up for 2014 closures of their practices, this idiotic "plan" ...more has no provisions for new general practice doctors, and it leaves those 45,000 the "progressives" claim die each year because they are uninsured, STILL UNINSURED! Damning 135,000 to death....if you believe the politicians!
The "plan" is not a "reform"! Reform leaves the existing system intact and easy to return to jut in case rthings don't work out. This "plan" destroys the existing system and if it fails (and it will) leaves chaos in its' wake.
And it is still unconstitutional!
and by the way- I'm not a republican- I'm a registered democrat- who will be voting for your opponent come November!!!!!!!!
Hope you join Pelosi and Reid on the unemployment line!!!
It's about reigning in costs, and corporate greed at the expense of the people.
This cleanup has to start somewhere, and, this is it.
Remember, the most powerful weapon on the planet isn't any gun, or bomb, it is fear which is such. Politicians have, and always will use it for leverage to meet their own ends.
My advice is to be rational, avoid the Polemics, and stick to the facts.