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Tony Ondrusek is founder and publisher of Insurance & Financial Advisor and IFAwebnews.com.

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The House passed its own health care reform bill without allowing the public to see the final legislation.

The Senate, likewise, is preparing to vote on its version of a health care reform bill without anyone except Sen. Harry Reid and the CBO seeing the final legislation. Most of the crafting of Sen. Reid’s bill was done in private, behind closed doors, with no (none, zero, nada) public disclosure.

Senate Democrats voted in the middle of the night to prohibit any and all debate of the legislation. Even the Democrats have not read the bill, which they are expected to vote on and pass before an artificial deadline that allows them to leave for a three-week Christmas break.

All of this without the public seeing the legislation.

Here is what President Obama had to say about the process (during a town hall meeting where he first proposed his health care overhaul during his campaign to be president, in August 2008):

“I’m going to have all the negotiations around a big table. We’ll have doctors and nurses and hospital administrators. Insurance companies, drug companies — they’ll get a seat at the table, they just won’t be able to buy every chair. But what we will do is, we’ll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies. And so, that approach, I think is what is going to allow people to stay involved in this process.”