More on Health Care Reform in the Two Washingtons

The Washington Policy Center has a link to the 850-page House bill  I imagine that will look like the short version before they're finished. As the Policy Center says, the details matter.

The debate is just now starting as more people understand the restrictions of liberty and the costs of government controlled health care.

Les Blumenthal writes for McClatchy about how Washington's two senators are weighing in on the evolving debate. On one controversial provision, they are in agreement:

...both senators say a bill should include a government option that could compete with private insurance.

That support makes their opposition to "single-payer" less important. The public option begins the slide to a government-run system.

Intriguingly, two veterans of the U.S. Justice Department question the constitutionality of government health care in today's Wall Street Journal, citing the "right to privacy" argument underlying, among other opinions, Roe. v. Wade.

It is, of course, difficult to imagine choices more "central to personal dignity and autonomy" than measures to be taken for the prevention and treatment of disease -- measures that may be essential to preserve or extend life itself. Indeed, when the overwhelming moral issues that surround the abortion question are stripped away, what is left is a medical procedure determined to be "necessary" by an expectant mother and her physician.

If the government cannot proscribe -- or even "unduly burden," to use another of the Supreme Court's analytical frameworks -- access to abortion, how can it proscribe access to other medical procedures, including transplants, corrective or restorative surgeries, chemotherapy treatments, or a myriad of other health services that individuals may need or desire?

Read the whole thing. Incredibly complex issues remain to be addressed.