Sen. John Ensign hosts forum on health reform

By J. Patrick Coolican

Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2010 | 7:08 p.m.

Sen. John Ensign on Wednesday hosted a town hall forum at the Summerlin library on health care legislation being considered by Congress, using the occasion to rally opposition.

There are currently competing House and Senate versions of bills that seek to give health insurance to the nearly 50 million Americans who have none, and to cut health care costs and private health insurance premiums, which rose more than 80 percent during the past decade.

Ensign, who is Nevada’s junior senator and a third-term Republican, argued the bills are too expensive, allow too much government infringement in the private sector and cut too much from popular government programs.

The claims were met with applause by a mostly sympathetic audience.

Ensign said the plan amounted to a “massive expansion of the federal government into health care”; would add $500 billion in new taxes; would cut $500 billion from Medicare; and would lead to the loss of 1.6 million jobs.

In some cases, his assertions seemed to contradict one another. For instance, he criticized both the expansion of government and the cuts to Medicare, which is itself a government program.

He asked which of the 280 or so attendees are enrolled in Medicare; more than half raised their hands.

Ensign repeated an explosive charge that is now part of health care debate lore.

He referred to a proposed “Comparative Effectiveness Research Center,” which would compile data on the most cost-effective treatments to improve quality and cut costs.

Ensign and other Republicans have taken this to mean that the data would be used to make decisions about rationing care, which would lead to so-called “death panels” to sentence the weakest and oldest citizens to die. He pointed to a similar commission in England.

Language in the House bill specifically forbids use of the information for rationing of care.

Some argue that there’s already rationing in the American health care system; 45,000 people a year die because they can’t afford insurance, according to research by the American Journal of Public Health.