My letter to Senators Schumer, Gillibrand,and Congressman Bishop and my local papers. Feel free to use or enhance:
The currently pending “Health Care” legislation would, if enacted, add yet another level of unsustainable debt that we as taxpayers simply cannot afford while the Nation suffers through a deep economic recession. The insanity that seems to have gripped the Democratic party’s leadership would have us create and layer on new entitlement programs while others like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are virtually bankrupt, or soon will be. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has already gone down this same road and it is now saddled with the highest insurance premiums in the country; declining new business startups; overcrowded waiting rooms and overworked primary-care physicians. You will never hear these “inconvenient truths” from the democrats, yet this is their similar “prescription” taken to a national level.
The bitterly partisan spectacle orchestrated by Obama, Pelosi and Reid over the past year has been particularly offensive. Never in my adult life have I witnessed more blatant, in your face corruption on full public display; corruption that almost seems to be purposefully and cynically taunting the American people as it is paraded out on a nearly daily basis. The Louisiana Purchase; the Cornhusker Kickback; Federal Judgeships to relatives of wavering Congressmen; special “Cadillac” plan tax exemptions for Unions; tax cheats in charge of the Treasury; tax cheats in charge of the House Ways and Means Committee; the Wall Street bailouts...the list, unfortunately, goes on and on and on.
Largely hidden from the sanitizing light of day and heavily influenced by special interest groups and sweetheart deals, the health care reform package is estimated to cost nearly one trillion dollars over the next decade. Of course, we all know how accurate CBO projections can be...can anyone honestly think of one Federal entitlement program that has stayed within budget and never blew far past its original cost estimates? In 1967, for example, the House Ways and Means Committee predicted that the new Medicare program, launched the previous year, would cost about $12 billion in 1990. Actual Medicare spending in 1990 was $110 billion—off by nearly a factor of 10. Only in the mind of a liberal democrat can the forces of supply and demand be magically suspended; where spiking a sharp increase in demand for medical care (i.e., 30 million or so new enrollees) will somehow lead to lower health care costs AND increased quality to boot, everything else being equal.
Indeed, if the current Obamacare proposal is so wonderful - then why does Congress exempt itself from its nefarious clutches? Perhaps this is all the American people really need to know about the current “reform” effort that the Democrats are trying to shove down our throats in an unprecedented power grab by the Federal government. In point of fact, it represents an unconstitutional attempt to abridge our individual rights, as American Citizens, of free choice and self-determination. It will cripple entrepreneurism and small business, the engine that creates virtually all new jobs in the United States, and seriously erode the quality of life and living standards for future generations to come as we condemn our nation to perpetual economic servitude to the Chicoms.
I implore all elected officials to do the honorable, courageous and righteous thing and change course. Work to stop this ill-conceived madness and start over. There are many common sense alternative measures, like tort reform to reduce the costs of defensive medicine; making insurance portable across State lines to increase competition; pre-tax health savings accounts, etc, that would go a long way towards driving down health care costs. One would have thought the lessons of Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts were clear: the American people are waking up. The chants of “hope” and “change” have lost their thrill and luster; their real meanings exposed. The middle class, the very backbone of this great nation, faces the prospect of increasingly confiscatory taxation from all levels of government for even the most basic of services. We are at the breaking point, and simply can take no more.