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Senator Kit Bond, of Missouri, will vote 'no' in tonight's Senate Health Care Bill vote.

'The Health Care Bill we are debating on the floor, introduced by Senate Leader Harry Reid, is one turkey no one should be thankful for,' Bond said in a conference call Saturday. 'It was written behind closed doors and all the majority had to offer the American People is over 2,000 pages that will cost us over $2 trillion over 10 years, increase health care cost, raise taxes, cut Medicare benefits for senior, and that's not the kind of reform I believe that Missourians want.'

However, Bond does believe that the Bill will be passed through the Senate tonight, when they vote on the bill.

'I'm afraid that this bill is likely to move forward,' Bond said. 'This is a critical vote. This one is very, very dangerous bill and will take over health care. We are going to offer some very significant amendments to it.'

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Amendments that he said are going to be proposed by Senate Republicans include liability reform, and extending the bargaining power of small businesses by allowing them to purchase health care across state line and the ability to pool together for negotiating purposes.

'We've introduced these bills many times before,' Bond said. 'Jim Talent and I have worked for years to give small businesses, and other groups like farmers, the opportunity to purchase health care by going together in large groups and getting administrative savings from health care and bargain for lower prices. This would have a huge impact, because 26 million people who don't have health care are either small business men and women, their employees or families of those people, if we can get health care rates down for them, it would make a huge difference.'

Bond also wants to focus on Community Health Services, Medical Liability malpractice reform, which he said could save $100-200 billion, defensive medicine and allow people to cross state lines when purchasing health insurance.

'Very simply, what people are worried about is the cost of health insurance and the fact that people are uninsured,' he said. 'What we need to do, is common sense solutions. End junk lawsuits that would save from $120 to 240 billion a year, not only because of the cost of lawyers but the cost of defensive medicine. Secondly, I encourage competition to allow Americans to buy insurance across state lines and allowing farmers and small business to pool together to get health care for themselves and anyone who works for them. Give individuals tax equity, so they have the same exclusions that employees of large corporations have. And invest in prevention and wellness programs.'

Bond believes Medicare and Medicaid will not be saved through this bill because of the provision in the bill that will take away Federal monies from these programs in two years.

'They cover the cost of the expansion in the first two years, but after that the states will be left to pick it up,' Bond said. 'That is about a $25 billion added Medicaid expenditure added on (to the state of Missouri) according to the Congressional Budget Office. I haven't presented a budget in Jefferson City for several decades, but I can tell you finding that much money for increased Medicaid, given the difficult times we're in, is going to be an insurmountable challenge for the state government.'According to Bond, the Congressional Budget Office says it will increase health care costs, ultimately, though many Senate Democrats have claimed that this will not raise the Federal Deficit.

'That's how they get the deficit reduction in the first 10 years,' Bond said. 'They collect taxes beginning in 2010 and don't start paying out until 2014. If you were an officer of a public company and claimed that your program was making a profit by counting 10 years of revenue and only 6 years of expenditures, you'd be sent to prison. Bernie Madoff would have to step aside. This is the type of shell game we're dealing with. This has been a totally partisan bill written in a back room without any Republican input.'

Bond was also asked during the conference call about end of life care, which has been a hot topic debate during discussion on the Health Care Bill.

'I don't think we have found any specifics on hospice care,' Bond said. 'But again, they dumped this 2,000 page baby on Wednesday night and we're still trying to find that out. It would have been nice if this had been crafted in the open air, so that we would have known what was going into it. I'll be darned if I want some government bureaucrat telling me when it's time to toddle off.'

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