Opinion: ObamaCare's March Madness

(March 18) -- This is a great time of year for college basketball fans. Too bad the same can't be said of the March madness enveloping Washington, D.C., because of the ObamaCare debate.

Basketball's "March Madness" decides a national champion. ObamaCare's March madness is bringing the Capitol some hard fouls by Democrats, while the referees make very controversial calls about our nation's health care system. It may result in a big loss for Americans.

Right now, the House of Representatives is considering the Senate-passed version of the president's approach to comprehensive health care reform. This version of ObamaCare contains no explicit public option to compete with private insurance plans, but it does include taxpayer-funded abortion and tax increases on expensive employer and union-funded health care plans. It also contains some controversial earmarks known as the "Cornhusker Kickback" and the "Louisiana Purchase."

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has stated that "nobody wants to vote for the Senate bill." So the House will also vote on a health care reconciliation measure that could be considered by both the House and Senate. Average Americans don't know exactly what is in this measure, but the White House previewed some of the items just before the Blair House summit a few weeks ago.

The president's ideas for reconciliation included eliminating the "Cornhusker Kickback" but providing a portion of the promised expansion of Medicaid to all states. The president also adds billions more in subsidies to the entitlement program that pays for seniors' prescription drugs through Medicare. Also, the plan sets up a new government-run bureaucracy called the Health Insurance Rate Authority to cap insurance companies' rates and regulate these plans.

These measures are expected to be considered under something called the "Slaughter Rule." Named after the chair of the House Rules Committee, Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., it would allow the Senate-passed ObamaCare bill to be "deemed" to have passed the House upon passage of the health care reconciliation measure. This complicated procedure would allow the Senate-passed health care measure to pass the House without a direct vote.

Many conservatives have called foul, because Article 1, Section 7 of the U.S. Constitution states, "Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it becomes a Law, be presented to the President of the United States." If the House never has a direct vote on the Senate-passed version of ObamaCare, conservatives argue that members of Congress may be violating their oath to abide by the Constitution.

The polls continue to indicate that the public perception of ObamaCare is bad. The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll indicates that 41 percent approve and 57 percent disapprove of the president's handling of the issue of health care. Rasmussen's most recent report found that "43 percent favor the health care plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats, while 53 percent oppose it. Those findings include 23 percent who strongly favor the plan and 46 percent who strongly oppose it."

Finally, it appears that the highly partisan health care debate has hurt the president's standing among the voters. Gallup reports that 46 percent approve and 47 percent disapprove of the president right now.

This has been an ugly battle between Republicans and Democrats on comprehensive health care reform. Both teams are battered and bloody, yet somebody has to win.

Right now the Democrats have the power of the presidency and control of Congress, yet they seem to have a hard time scoring at the most important moments.

As this administration sets up for a last second shot in a tie game, the American people will be watching to see if they end up the big winners or big losers, stuck with an unpopular and potentially unconstitutional version of ObamaCare.

Brian Darling is director of U.S. Senate relations at The Heritage Foundation.