Healthcare Reform Letter to Editor

[Craig Brookhart]

“Healthcare Reform”, sounds great and I’m all for it; all of you probably are as well. In fact, if you’re not, you should be. How can you not be for making reforms to an expensive drain on each of our pocketbooks. Our family has seen our rates go up by about 30% over the last couple of years and we are for the most part healthy. Then there is the pre-existing conditions issue, which if compared to car insurance, would prevent you from driving. Of course, we could talk about elec- tronic medical records, which would give patients & Doctors a myriad of benefits. Or how about portability, or drug cost reductions?

So, given these few basic and easily attained areas for improvement, how is it that the bureaucrats propose to address the issues? Rather than a well thought through, incremental approach tackling each problem area, they’ve chosen a complete rewrite, basically a hostile takeover. It could be described as on the order of giving the patient a lobotomy for their headache, rather than an aspirin. There are so many things wrong with the current approach, any reasonable, thinking person must be angry. Either that, or you aren’t paying attention. Frankly, from a Constitutional view, many scholars would point out the government is out of bounds. So, put aside party affiliations for a moment and just look at this whole mess from a common sense approach.

First, the government track record of running programs is disastrous. For example, according to President Obama, the fraud, mismanagement & waste savings in Medicare/Medicaid alone is somewhere around $500B, while the Social Secu- rity trust fraud is in the $B’s and both are headed for bankruptcy. Or how about the USPS? To quote the US Postmaster General from March of 2009, “The gap between revenue and costs has become a chasm, widening each day. We are facing losses of historic proportions. Our situation is critical.” The USPS projects a loss of $6B for 2010. Overall, about 5 percent of spending in federal programs in fiscal year 2009 was improper, according to details of a government financial report that were released in November. One must ask, if all government programs are so miserably abused & failing, how will the takeover of 1/6th of the GDP turn out? As it stands, the CBO keeps scoring bills and inevitably reports increases in cost, complexity, taxes & bureaucracy, while decreasing access & quality. Let’s spend a couple Trillion dollars, create some 100+ new government agencies & put bureaucrats in charge of our care. Sign me up, sounds great doesn’t it?

Surely, if the government is going to drive another entitlement program, the country must be flush with money, no? Imag- ine a run away train and you will have a better idea of what’s happening with your and my tax dollars. The federal deficit for this year alone is around $1.5T, with interest payments over $380B for the year. And, as some of you know the Democrats in the House just voted to raise the US debt ceiling by $1.8T, to over $14T. With outstanding public debt of over $12T and each already citizen owing around $39,300, the clear & obvious solution our politicians come up with is to raise the limit on the governments credit cards and push another massive entitlement program.

Not convinced how great this is yet? Consider who wrote this 2000+ page monstrosity? So far, we know pharma, trial lawyers, and other special interests have had a heavy hand in the drafts, while Republicans have been shunned. Not that Republicans have great claims to fame overall, but they represent about half; millions of legal Americans. Where is the transparency we were promised? Bills to force public posting of this legislation for as little as 72hrs before a vote haven’t materialized, nor have the CSPAN cameras President Obama promised would be in the room... remember? Furthermore, how can you get to a bill this size without any debate over tort reform, cross-state insurance purchasing, drug cost reduc- tions, or meaningful discussions of improving quality?

Do you trust the rhetoric coming out of Washington? Half-truths and misrepresentations dominate, yet these people are supposed to work for us. It’s painfully evident there are real problems in this country but Healthcare is not the biggest one of them. For starters, we need: 1) Ethics reform, 2) Constitutional adherence, 3) Term limits, 4) Fiscal responsibility & 5) Common sense. If you are buying into this current nonsense you need to get involved & educate yourself. Kill this bill & start over. 100 pages should do it: Tort reform, eliminate laws blocking cross-state insurance, and above all remember the Constitution says promote the general welfare, not provide for the general welfare.