An Open Letter to Any Senator Who is Still "On the Fence" on Government-Run Health Care

It goes without saying that any senator who can't make up their mind on the issue of turning the best health care system in the world into a massive inefficient government bureaucracy is a moron. But the fact is that these morons hold our liberty in the palms of their hands and it's up to us to do everything we can to persuade them to vote against their leadership and the clueless jackass who is the current occupant of the White House. Here's my attempt which I recently faxed to any of the aforementioned morons that I think might be persuadable. I strongly suggest that any of you who value your liberty do the same. I don't even care if you copy and paste mine. We all must do anything we can to stop this:

Ladies and gentlemen of the United States Senate:

* 10.2% unemployment, -- 17%+ if you count the underemployed and people who have stopped looking for work. We've lost almost 4 million jobs on this president's watch and all he has for the unemployed is unsubstantiated talk about "saved" jobs and a "jobs summit".

* $100 trillion in deficits national debt and unfounded liabilities in current entitlement programs. Trillions in debt sold to our enemies who could destroy our economy in the blink of an eye by merely calling it in. All this to be passed on to my kids and grandkids (and everyone else's for that matter) creating the first generation of Americans - ever - that may not be able to give their kids a better standard of living than we gave them.

* Medicare: Bankrupt. Medicaid: Bankrupt. Social Security: Bankrupt

And to this, your leadership and your president want to add the granddaddy of all entitlements - national health care - that will necessarily give us a lower standard of care, rationing and huge bills for premiums, a bill that, again, will be borne on the backs of our children and grandchildren. This monstrosity is purported to cost $1.3 trillion over ten years, but three of those years are front-loading: We start paying for it three years before it even starts! Using this type of "fuzzy math", we'll probably end up right where Medicare was 25 years after its inception: 1100% over the 1965 projections! So let's be conservative and say that your genius leaders have only underestimated by half as much. That means, the front-loaded costs over ten years of funding seven years of this plan will only be a "modest" $6.5 trillion! What a deal, ladies and gentlemen! An entitlement that eats up roughly half of the current annual gross domestic product over ten years. Add this to Social Security, the newly slashed Medicare, Medicaid, the S-chip program and other entitlements and you have an unsustainable mess that will turn this country into Botswana quicker than you can say "somebody get me a doctor".  And while we're on our way to turning the world's most prosperous republic into one of the world's largest slums, we'll start out by raping current families to pay for the "benefits" of crappy health care like they have in Canada and Great Britain.

Let me tell you ladies and gentlemen, my family is by no means "rich". But Nancy Pelosi's health care bill that you are going to attempt to "reconcile" with your own calls for $15,000 in premiums for a family in my family's income range - roughly three times what our portion of the premium on our employer-provided "Cadillac" (Who in the hell are you to tell me that my health plan is TOO good?) plan is. When you tax employers 35% on their "Cadillac" plans on the one hand and have them pay an 8% penalty for not carrying health insurance on their employees, any third-grader can tell you that you have set up a recipe for employers to drop their coverage. It's common sense, ladies and gentlemen. So it's disingenuous at best and a lie at worst to try to tell middle class Americans with employer-sponsored plans that they aren't going to end up in the government pool at $15,000 a year for crappy care.

What do we need? We need REAL health care reform:

1. We need to fix the problems with Medicare, Medicaid, the VA health system and the Tribal heath care systems before we tackle anything else that has anything remotely to do with MORE health care. The government has proven it can't run four separate (at least) health care programs. Why should we have any reason to think it can successfully run yet another health care plan?
2. We need market-based solutions: Get the government OUT of health care, don't get it more involved. Some of us are actually old enough to remember when the health care system ran well and was cost-effective - before the mid-sixties when the government waded into the fray. You paid cash for basic services and the services were priced so that you could pay cash for them. You had health insurance for catastrophic claims.
3. Along these lines, the government needs to encourage free market alternatives to government intervention: Health savings accounts; allow insurance companies to expand their risk pools by selling across state lines; get rid of all the ridiculous mandates for care and let Americans pick the coverage that works best for them.
4. Tort reform: All of you know that one of the biggest drivers of health care costs is the outrageous costs of malpractice insurance, litigation and all the tests doctors call for to make absolutely certain that they won't get sued if the patient isn't happy with the outcome.

Ladies and gentlemen, you may not be my senators. But your vote will affect my liberty and property and that of my children and grandchildren for years - decades to come. We have the best health care system in the world, and I ask that you help keep it that way - vote against the Obama/Reid/Pelosi health care boondoggle. My family's prosperity and health care and your prospects for reelection depend on it.
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