Rep. Dave Camp (MI) wrote a blog post recently opposing the Democrats approach to health care. Please see the following excerpt:
In 1994, as we debated health care reform, the full Ways and Means Committee spent 17 days over six weeks conducting our markup. This year, our markup will last a day – maybe two at most.
More importantly, in 1994, the Ways and Means Committee held a dozen hearings (eight at Subcommittee, four at full Committee) on the bill after its introduction – not counting the 32 additional hearings the full Committee and two of its Subcommittees held before the Clinton bill was formally introduced.
We held one hearing on the bill before us, however not one of the witnesses were able to speak knowledgeably about the provisions in the bill because they were only given a couple of days to digest it.
It is also worth pointing out that the Committee refused to act on the Clinton bill until nearly three months after the Congressional Budget Office released a comprehensive, 104-page analysis and score.
I have a copy of that analysis and it is still available online. We have no such analysis of the bill before us. What we have is a rough guess-timate based on specifications as outlined by the Majority, not on actual legislative text.We cannot afford to guess when it comes to health care. This is not some think-tank experiment; these are people’s lives, people’s jobs we are talking about. Frankly, the Speaker’s timeline endangers not only the health of all Americans, but the health of our economy. This committee has no business marking up a bill of which CBO cannot tell us its cost or impacts.