The Healthcare Screw

I was asked by my Congresswoman to attend a healtchcare Town Hall meeting, and declined.  I sent her this letter instead.

Thank you for the invitation, but I don't think I'll be coming. I appreciate the fact that you've offered to have a public forum on the subject. However, I find it hard to accept that our representatives still haven't realized how much we hate the concept of the federal government infusing themselves into our lives, especially as applied to our healthcare.

A Town Hall forum, in my humble opinion, carries about as much weight as an honest vote in the Minnesota Senate race. That is, the socialists who want more government imposed on the citizens will keep "counting" votes or changing rules until they've "won".

With its restrictions on who can buy health insurance, from whom it can be gotten, where we must live to get it or keep it, and how it can be marketed, our government already has too much negative impact on its costs and availability. The culture of our legal-remedy system, where doctors are sued for every conceivable hint at malpractice, has done nothing but fatten the lawyers at the expense of everyone else.

I am a cancer survivor (Adenoid Cystic Carcinoma- July 31, 2007). I lost my job when I told my employer of the diagnosis. That meant I also lost my health insurance. Even before the availability of State Continuation Coverage (Texas) ran out, my former employer changed coverage. That meant, like it or not, my coverage changed. And procedures which were "all covered 100%" under the original plan, were then considered out-of-network. The hospital's and the insurance company's solution was to hand me the bag for the $50,000-plus tab.

I'm not asking for yours or anyone's help or sympathy. I just want you to know that I personally know that there are lots of things wrong, and worth fixing, concerning healthcare. Government insurance is not the answer. More taxes aren't the solution, either, thank you very much.

The federal government could begin by capping damage claims . Other than that, the best thing all government can do is remove itself from the equation. I do not wish to owe the government for my well-being or my livelyhood.


Just get out of the way.


Thanks again,

Also this week, I told a friend of mine about the invitation and my response.  This is a person who has health insurance, paid for by his employer (the taxpayers of his state).  He said to me that the best thing for healthcare would be if the insurance companies were no longer allowed to make a profit.  Their pursuit, in his opinion, of the almighty dollar, was the root cause for the unaffordability of individual health insurance.

I confess, I was dumbstruck by this statement.  I honestly couldn't begin an retort, because I wasn't sure where to begin.  And this is what we're up against.  Good people, like my friend, think that a part of our economy (a very large part, indeed) should be forced to have profit removed from their business equation.  I wish I'd have asked him he'd like all the profit removed from his own paycheck.  His teacher, Vladimir Lenin, would be so proud.  Lenin said that the most important first step toward transforming a culture to socialism is through addicition to so-called "free" healthcare.  He also said that a lie told often enough, becomes the truth.

Even better, though, than my suggestions to my Congresswoman, are the solutions offered by Ann Coulter.  I should copy her entire recent article, but I hope this snippet is enough to get you to go read the whole thing:

Liberals keep complaining that Republicans don't have a plan for reforming health care in America. I have a plan!


It's a one-page bill creating a free market in health insurance. Let's all pause here for a moment so liberals can Google the term "free market."


Nearly every problem with health care in this country -- apart from trial lawyers and out-of-date magazines in doctors' waiting rooms -- would be solved by my plan.

Of course, personally, I'd like to include a clause for those of us with, by some definition, a pre-existing condition.  That clause might read something like, The PE-condition exclusion is hereby nullified if the applicant can win a fist-fight against the Company bare-knuckles champion.  I'd feel awfully good about my chances against just about anybody they could trot out.

Sometime this weekend, folks, the self-serving bastards in Washington are going to screw us.  They've tried every way imaginable to legislatively "pass" their big-government scheme in the open, and have been loudly reprimanded by the constituents.  They're going to pretend to believe that this "deem & pass" trickery will absolve them of being held accountable in November.  What they are also hoping is that once you're part of this new entitlement class, you'll be so addicted to the nanny state, you'll quieten back down and embrace your enslavement.

UPDATE/Important side-note:

If you are a Congressperson holding the deciding vote, or a bloc of a half-dozen at the deciding end of this thing, and you boldly vote "NO!" when the time comes, you'll be praised and hailed and loved even more than Scott Brown was in his victory.  Wouldn't you like to practically guarantee your political future?