🚀 go-pugleaf

Straight from the New England Journal of Medicine:

http://www.nejmjobs.org/rpt/physician-survey-health-reform-impact.aspx

"Physician Survey: Health Reforms Potential Impact on Physician Supply and 
Quality of Medical Care

Mar. � Apr. 2010
Key Findings

Physician Support of Health Reform in General
� 	62.7% of physicians feel that health reform is needed but should be 
implemented in a more targeted, gradual way, as opposed to the sweeping 
overhaul that is in legislation.

Health Reform and Primary Care Physicians
� 	46.3% of primary care physicians (family medicine and internal 
medicine) feel that the passing of health reform will either force them out 
of medicine or make them want to leave medicine."
_____________________

"Deem and pass" tactics unconstitutional! This tactic is being called the 
"unraveling of constitutional rule in the United States"!:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0310/34508.html

"�Slaughter Solution� could face legal challenge
Tags:

    * Health Care Reform,
    * Supreme Court,
    * Nancy Pelosi,
    * Louise Slaughter

    * Listen to this article. Powered by Odiogo.com Listen
    * Print
    * Comment
    * Email
    *
    * Subscribe

By FRED BARBASH | 3/16/10 2:50 PM EDT
Text Size

    * -
    * +
    * reset

The deem and pass 'Slaughter Solution,' named for Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-
N.Y.)., would be vulnerable to credible constitutional challenge, experts 
say.
    The 'Slaughter Solution' is named for Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.). 
Photo: AP 

Digg/Buzz It Up

    *
    * Digg this Story!
    * Buzz it up!
    * Add to LinkedIn

POLITICO 44

The so-called �Slaughter solution� for enacting health care reform without 
a conventional House vote on an identically worded Senate bill would be 
vulnerable to credible constitutional challenge, experts say.

No lawyer interviewed by POLITICO thought the constitutionality of the 
�deem and pass� approach being considered by House Democrats was an open-
and-shut case either way. But most agreed that it could raise 
constitutional issues sufficiently credible that the Supreme Court might 
get interested, as it has in the past.

�If I were advising somebody," on whether deem and pass would run into 
constitutional trouble, "I would say to them, �Don�t do it,�� said Alan 
Morrison, a professor at the George Washington University Law School who 
has litigated similar issues before the Supreme Court on behalf of the 
watchdog organization Public Citizen. �What does �deem� mean? In class I 
always say it means �let's pretend.� 'Deems' means it's not true.�

Any challenge likely would be based on two Supreme Court rulings, one in 
1983 and the other in 1998, in which the court held that there is only one 
way to enact a law under the Constitution: it must be passed by both houses 
of Congress and signed by the president.

In the more recent of the two rulings, a 1998 decision striking down the 
line-item veto, the court specifically said that the bills approved by both 
houses must contain the �the same text.� Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.), 
for whom the procedure under consideration by House Democrats is now named, 
and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) filed amicus briefs arguing for the 
result the court reached in the line-item veto case.

In the case of health care reform, the �Slaughter solution� would employ a 
�deem and pass� or �self-executing� procedure whereby the House would craft 
a rule deeming the Senate bill enacted, without a direct vote, for which 
members could pay a steep political price.

The Senate bill and its text would not come before the House in the 
ordinary way for an up-or-down vote but would be passed indirectly. While 
this procedure has been used before, the Supreme Court has said in past 
cases that repetition of an unconstitutional process does not make it 
constitutional.

�You run the risk that it could be declared unconstitutional. ... If both 
houses vote on the substance of everything, then I'm not troubled. But if 
it looks like the House is never going to vote on the Senate bill, that�s 
very troubling. I wouldn�t want to stake the entire bill on that,� said 
Morrison, who authored the brief challenging the line-item veto signed by 
Slaughter and Pelosi.

"Any process that we follow will first be carefully vetted by the House 
Parliamentarian and consistent with the precedent and past practices of the 
House," said a spokesman for the Rules Committee.

"And just as importantly, if we do pursue a plan where the rule includes 
self-executing language, it should not surprise Republicans - who 
themselves have eagerly used that process many times in the past."

The constitutional questions about the process intensified Monday thanks to 
a Wall Street Journal op-ed by former U.S. appeals court judge Michael 
McConnell, now a professor at Stanford Law School and a senior fellow at 
the Hoover Institution.

The �Slaughter solution,� he wrote, �may be clever, but it is not 
constitutional.�"... [rest of article]