With the issuing of an executive order, President Obama may have tipped the scales in favor of the Democrat Health Care Reform plan.

Representative Bart Stupak has indicated that with the assurance that an executive order barring the use of federal funds for abortions issued by President Obama, he and several other pro-life Democrats would now support the Health Care Reform legislation.

Several insiders are still claiming that the Democrats are still a few votes shy of the 216 needed to pass the Senate’s version of the Health Care Reform bill and the House’s bill that makes changes to the Senate bill.  However, that remains doubtful as 8 or 9 are flipping to yes as a result of the promise from the President.

American’s should note that according to the rules of Congress and the Constitution, only the Senate version of the bill becomes law.  The bill with the changes proposed by the House would still need to be passed by the Senate and signed into law by President Obama.

The final legislation faces several more challenges in the courts as many people consider many of the provisions in the health care reform bill to be in violation of the Constitution.

Reconciliation is a process that was set up to allow versions of a House and Senate budget bill to be made into one by making the numbers equal.  However, the Democrats are now threatening to use reconciliation to force health care reform through congress and down the throats of the American people.

According to Senator Reid, the Democrats would use reconciliation to make small changes to the existing Senate bill to make it more palatable to key Democrat Senators and members of the house.

Since losing their 60 seat filibuster proof Senate, the Democrats have been scrambling to find a way to pass their unpopular version of health care reform.  It would appear that they are willing to use one of the least popular with the American people to do it.

Conspiracy theorists claim that the “open” health care reform summit held by Democrats later this week is setting the stage for the use of reconciliation.  The claim is that the Democrats will show up with their version of health care reform, listen to and then reject a few ideas from Republicans, and then claim they have no other option but reconciliation to get health care reform through congress.

It now appears that the President and the Democrat leadership is willing to go it alone for health care reform.  However, using reconciliation to pass health care reform does not just pit Democrats against the Republicans, it pits them against the will of the American people.

However, there were several other “untruths” in the President’s speech.  In one part of the speech, the President claims that “We spend one-and-a-half times more per person on health care than any other country, but we aren’t any healthier for it.”  However, that depends upon how you measure “healthier”.  At best, the President was attempting to mislead the American public.

… Americans have a higher survival rate for 13 of the 16 most common forms of cancer.

While it is true that America ranks behind many other countries in life expectancy, the health care that America receives is far superior to the health care that other people on the planet enjoy.  Our system isn’t perfect, but it is by far the best by many measures.

There is a great article on Forbes.com by Marie-Josse Kravis that details some of the facts that support the claim that Americans have the best health care in the world which easily translates into the most expensive.  After all, higher quality service is more expensive that poor quality service.

The first thing to understand is that health care is only one component that determines average life expectancy.  For instance, America ranks first in road fatalities.  However, Americans also drive more that other countries.  Traffic fatalities pull down the average life expectancy.

America is also first in fat.  According to the OECD,  32.2 % of Americans are obese which reduces life expectancy.  The OCED average is 14.6% which helps explain why Americans have a lower life expectancy than many nations.  Compared to Japan’s 3% obesity rate, it is easy to see why Japan enjoys a higher life expectancy.

However, the health care system doesn’t have a major impact on obesity and little to no impact on road fatalities.  The health care system also doesn’t drastically reduce other lifestyle choices such as smoking, alcohol, and drug use which all reduce life expectancy.

What the health care system does impact, is survival rates of disease and injury.  For example, as the Forbes article points out “…the journal Lancet Oncology found that Americans have a higher survival rate for 13 of the 16 most common forms of cancer.”  In fact for all cancers, the U.S. mortality rate is 166.3 per 100,000 compared to the OECD average of 171.

America does need some health insurance reform to help control costs, expand coverage, and eliminate fraud and waste in the government programs.  However, we do not need a massive government plan to recreate our health care system in addition to our health insurance.

The news often reports on foreign leaders and celebrities coming to America when they face serious and life threatening health situations.  Many of those leaders are from countries that have socialized health care.  One would wonder why if those people that can afford to pay for health care would come here if the health care in their countries is better.

You can easily say that Americans pay more for their health care than many countries, but you can’t say that our health care isn’t the best.

In several town halls throughout the country, Democrat congressmen are pushing the myth that Illegal Immigrants will not be covered.  They point to a section of the bill that specifically prohibits the awarding of affordability credits to illegal immigrants. 

CRS also notes that “undocumented aliens” who have a “substantial presence” in the US would be required to buy health insurance (page 4) through the exchanges in HR3200.

However, as the CRS points out, the bill does nothing to require anybody to prove that they are a U.S. citizen before enrolling in the public option.  In fact, the CRS indicates that the bill requires Illegal Immigrants to enroll in the health insurance exchanges if they have a substantial presence in the U.S.

You can read the report here.  As more and more Americans get a chance to view and understand the bill, it becomes more and more obvious why the Obama administration and the Democrat controlled congress wanted to vote and pass the bill before it could face any scrutiny.

As Americans, we need to demand that our representatives take the time to read the bills they are voting on and allow the American people to view bills.  Even if they are for the idea of the bill, they and we need to understand how that idea will be implemented.