Today House Democrats unveiled a formal government takeover of health care bill that will increase taxes, increase premiums, increase spending, and cut Medicare. You can read the text of the legislation here. This bill is the wrong kind of reform and it ignores the millions of Americans who have stood up and said “no” to government run health care.
Fiscal conservatives recognize that our health care system needs a tune up, not a trade in. We have put together a better alternative for health care reform that will cut costs; eliminate the waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicare; make insurance portable; allow small businesses to pool together to negotiate coverage; and provide tax credits, not penalties, to businesses that insure their employees.
I believe we need to empower patients, not burden them with government mandates. We need to preserve the doctor-patient relationship, not let government bureaucrats make health care treatment decisions. Most importantly, we need to make high quality coverage affordable for everyone, not pick winners and losers. By taking these steps, I believe we can fix our health care system while strengthening our economy.
If the Health Care plan is so good, then why doesn’t Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the Democrats participate. Government cannot manage themselves, much less our Health Care. There is room for improvement, but the changes do not have to all be made at one time. We should slowly ease into these changes, because if Hawaii and Maryland cannot manage public health care, why should we think the Federal Government can manage something much larger.
Obama didn’t say that it would be the Postal Service or even run like it; the analogy is that a state-run organization can exist alongside private options (FedEx, UPS, DHL) and still be a viable alternative. If you don’t want to mail a letter and wait, you can overnight it. Yes, you will pay more, but if you have the money and want the best service, it’s available. If you’re short on funds and/or don’t mind waiting for a few days, then the very affordable $.43 is better than $12 for FedEx. As far as, “I never get my mail at home or office”, the vast majority of the time, it’s USER ERROR and not the post office that is the root of the issue.
To back the point, the idea is that the public will have an OPTION (Hence the name, “Public Option”.) to purchase health care that at least covers the basic human needs (the postage stamp version in the analogy) or keep their current provider, doctor, etc for a possibly higher rate (FedEx, UPS version). If you like paying what you are as an individual or a business, then keep doing what you’re doing. the biggest thing that this bill would do is to give people a doctor to go to and keep them out of the ER’s as they are the most costly, and people who can’t pay those bills constitute a large percentage of our current crisis.
There are more things wrong with the Republican spin, but I will leave that for another time. I do agree with the congressman in one respect: READ THE BILL. If it tells you you have to kill grandma or you have to go to the government’s choice of doctor with no recourse, it’s a fake.