12/3/09 A Doctors View of Healthcare Reform - MUST READ

The Doctor who wrote it which I literally would take a bullet for I respect so much you can read his life history here on Wikipedia. Yes I am done playing so start blocking my damn messages now because you are either with America or you are against it...its not enough to not have an opinion, hate Obama (I don't hate Obama, its not worth the effort, at best he is a puppet, MINUS KEEPING US SAFE I hate George Bush for where he put and/or allowed this country to go in his 8 years, Obama and his cronies just hit the accelerator on our demise as the country we know because of how freely they were handed the keys from a freewheeling DC from those on both sides of the aisle), agree with what I am saying, be too busy to worry about that kind of stuff, not understand that kind of stuff........that is simply BULLSHIT AND WE THE PEOPLE are calling you out.

That DOESN'T mean you have to charge the capitol or defend it with pitchforks but everyone has to damn become informed so they know what is up and can make intelligent decisions about it when called to vote as if it were your bills and your mortgage on the line......matter of fact its 4000000X more important than that.

IF YOU ENJOY THE LIFE YOU HAVE AND ARE YOUNG ENOUGH TRUST ME YOU SELFISH and LAZY BASTARD PAY ATTENTION IF YOU ARE NOT, IF YOU ARE A LITTLE OLDER and especially have children/grandchildren and want them to have the same if not better chances to succeed you have PAY ATTENTION. AND YES no one designated me but a NAVY SEAL and I damn sure could never do much more than die in a blaze of glory defending my family and 310 Sequoyah Drive, therefore I am doing what little I can to be able to look in the mirror and sleep at night knowing I tried to motivate anyone listening to pay the heck attention because everyday is a little closer to too late.

OK, off my soap box. This is the best article on the Obama-Pelosi- DC -CARE bill there is. I DARE anyone to bring up a viable argument but damn sure welcome it. The first link is to The Doctor's wikipedia so you can see his entire life if you are into creditials http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Krauthammer

This writing comes from the following:

http://townhall.com/columnists/CharlesKrauthammer/2009/11/27/kill_the_bills_do_health_reform_right?page=full&comments=true

WASHINGTON -- The United States has the best health care in the world -- but because of its inefficiencies, also the most expensive. The fundamental problem with the 2,074-page Senate health-care bill (as with its 2,014-page House counterpart) is that it wildly compounds the complexity by adding hundreds of new provisions, regulations, mandates, committees and other arbitrary bureaucratic inventions.

Worse, they are packed into a monstrous package without any regard to each other. The only thing linking these changes -- such as the 118 new boards, commissions and programs -- is political expediency. Each must be able to garner just enough votes to pass. There is not even a pretense of a unifying vision or conceptual harmony.

The result is an overregulated, overbureaucratized system of surpassing arbitrariness and inefficiency. Throw a dart at the Senate tome:

-- You'll find mandates with financial penalties -- the amounts picked out of a hat.

-- You'll find insurance companies (who live and die by their actuarial skills) told exactly what weight to give risk factors, such as age. Currently insurance premiums for 20-somethings are about one-sixth the premiums for 60-somethings. The House bill dictates the young shall now pay at minimum one-half; the Senate bill, one-third -- numbers picked out of a hat.

-- You'll find sliding scales for health-insurance subsidies -- percentages picked out of a hat -- that will radically raise marginal income tax rates for middle- class recipients, among other crazy unintended consequences.

The bill is irredeemable. It should not only be defeated. It should be immolated, its ashes scattered over the Senate swimming pool.

Then do health care the right way -- one reform at a time, each simple and simplifying, aimed at reducing complexity, arbitrariness and inefficiency.

First, tort reform. This is money -- the low-end estimate is about half a trillion per decade -- wasted in two ways. Part is simply hemorrhaged into the legal system to benefit a few jackpot lawsuit winners and an army of extravagantly rich malpractice lawyers such as John Edwards.

The rest is wasted within the medical system in the millions of unnecessary tests, procedures and referrals undertaken solely to fend off lawsuits -- resources wasted on patients who don't need them and which could be redirected to the uninsured who really do.

In the 4,000-plus pages of the two bills, there is no tort reform. Indeed, the House bill actually penalizes states that dare "limit attorneys' fees or impose caps on damages." Why? Because, as Howard Dean has openly admitted, Democrats don't want "to take on the trial lawyers." What he didn't say -- he didn't need to -- is that they give millions to the Democrats for precisely this kind of protection.

Second, even more simple and simplifying, abolish the prohibition against buying health insurance across state lines.

Some states have very few health insurers. Rates are high. So why not allow interstate competition? After all, you can buy oranges across state lines. If you couldn’t, oranges would be extremely expensive in Wisconsin, especially in winter.

And the answer to the resulting high Wisconsin orange prices wouldn’t be the establishment of a public option -- a federally run orange-growing company in Wisconsin -- to introduce "competition." It would be to allow Wisconsin residents to buy Florida oranges.

But neither bill lifts the prohibition on interstate competition for health insurance. Because this would obviate the need -- the excuse -- for the public option, which the left wing of the Democratic Party sees (correctly) as the royal road to fully socialized medicine.

Third, tax employer-provided health insurance. This is an accrued inefficiency of 65 years, an accident of World War II wage controls. It creates a $250 billion annual loss of federal revenues -- the largest tax break for individuals in the entire federal budget.

This reform is the most difficult to enact, for two reasons. The unions oppose it. And the Obama campaign savaged the idea when John McCain proposed it during last year's election.

Insuring the uninsured is a moral imperative. The problem is that the Democrats have chosen the worst possible method -- a $1 trillion new entitlement of stupefying arbitrariness and inefficiency.

The better choice is targeted measures that attack the inefficiencies of the current system one by one -- tort reform, interstate purchasing and taxing employee benefits. It would take 20 pages to write such a bill, not 2,000 -- and provide the funds to cover the uninsured without wrecking both U.S. health care and the U.S. Treasury.