January 26, 2010

Dear Mr. President,

Now that we have come to your first State of the Union address the pressure is on for passage of your precious health care bill. You just want some “accomplishment” to boast about. I guess you must be getting tired of constantly talking about your stimulus bill, blaming Bush for the economy, yourself, blaming Bush again, yourself, your stimulus bill, oh, and blaming Bush.

As this monstrosity of a bill nears a vote, it becomes more evident who the beneficiaries are. With the new taxes proposed the government will receive a large sum of money from individual people, businesses, and insurance companies. The state of Louisiana is set to get $300 million. You have agreed to exempt Union workers from the Senate’s proposed Cadillac Tax. The AMA and pharmaceutical companies are set to prosper from this bill as well. And who knows what other pay offs and back room deals were made in Congress just to get the bill through?

And why are you meeting personally with Union leaders? You promised the American people that your administration would be free of special interests. Unions are special interest groups. Why do they get an exemption from this tax? Less than 10% of the private sector is unionized. Your so called health reform will force the majority of Americans to pay an additional tax on their health insurance premiums, which will raise the cost of their insurance. To avoid bankruptcy, many will have to join a union. This will make Union memberships soar and these Unions, such as SEIU, will prosper from the additional membership dues.

Why have you given the Unions your personal guarantee that they will be exempted from this new tax? Your personal guarantee! Shakespeare wrote that there was something rotten in the state of Denmark. Well there is definitely something rotten in Washington D.C. The stench from you, the cronies in your administration, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barney Frank, and all of the sweetheart deals that have been going on in Congress would make even the dead recoil.

But you are not satisfied with taking over health care. You want to impose a 15% tax on the banks that took federal bailout money. First you forced the banks to take the money, then refused to take it back when they first tried to repay it. By now, most of the banks that took bailout funds have repaid it. But apparently this isn’t enough.

You feign anger over the banks using bailout money on bonuses. So what if they did? Why are you against CEOs getting paid bonuses? These companies have already repaid the TARP funds. You have no right to be angry. This is a punitive tax meant to force the banks fall into line.

While you are in the business of getting bailout money back from companies, why don’t you force GM and Chrysler to pay back what was given them? The car companies took more money from the federal government than the banks did, yet you have not demanded that they pay it back. The United Auto Workers Union received a hefty amount of bailout money when you took over General Motors, yet you have not demanded it back. A lot of businesses, that had contracts with these car companies, disappeared when Chrysler and General Motors fell under the government’s control. What has Gm or Chrysler produced since January 2009? Nothing. But this doesn’t bother you. It’s those banks that are the problem. You’re just so angry over those AIG bonuses.

What irritates you, Mr. President, is not the fact that the banks may have spent their bailout money of executive bonuses. What you’re angry about is the fact that you haven’t managed to gain control of the banks. That is the real reason for the tax. You’re not concerned that this tax will get passed on to consumers. You, like all socialists, want more money. You are going to squeeze the private sector until there is nothing left to gain, and even then it won’t be enough.

You said that “We want our money back.” Well, here is an idea: why don’t you and your liberal thugs take the money that you stole from the American people for your precious public works programs and stimulus package and give it back to the taxpayer? Or am I asking too much from our “historical” president.

Sincerely,

Lady Liberty

November 23, 2009

Dear Mr. President,
Why do you hate the United States so vehemently? What is it about this country that causes you to despise it so? This nation allowed you to go from being a poor black kid in Chicago to becoming the President of the United States. You used our capitalist system to improve your lot in life. Now you have the gall to trash it and to deny such a future to all Americans: current and future generations. You, like all liberals, use the free market to advance yourselves and then you turn around and talk about its shortcomings and how it has failed and is outdated. If the system is a failure and outdated, then how is it you and those like you were able to use it to your success? The real reason for you denunciation of capitalism is that you and your ilk do not want others to be successful, thus challenging your power. Such greed has proven to be the downfall of all who pursue it.
I do find it interesting that you have recently decided to allow Fox News to interview you, especially considering that you and your administration has spent the past several months trashing Fox. Your duplicity came out clearly in the interview. In it you said, “I think it is important though to recognize that if we keep on adding to the debt, even in the midst of this recovery, that at some point, people could lose confidence in the U.S. economy in a way that could actually lead to a double-dip recession.” Why then are you pushing for universal healthcare? The current estimated cost is $1.2 trillion. $1.2 trillion! Then, you want to go to a green economy meaning that all current means of producing energy will be eliminated and many more people will be forced into unemployment. You plan to accomplish this with cap and trade, another bill that will cost us trillions of dollars. Considering we had to beg China for money to pay for your disastrous stimulus bill, where are you going to get the money to pay for these other two bills? And this does not include whatever else you have planned.
You said yourself that we are in debt as a nation and that if spending does not cease the recession will be worse. Why then do you insist on spending money? Why don’t you urge Congress to quit spending? Why not cut all wasteful spending? It’s simple. You expect the average citizen to do as you tell them, but you have no intention of controlling your spending.
There are also a few lies in your above statement. 1) We are not in the midst of an economic recovery nor have ever been in one since your stimulus bill. 2) The world has already lost confidence in the U.S. economy. Why do you think the value of the dollar keeps falling? 3) Double-dip recession? We are well on our way to a depression, if we’re not already there. And we have you to thank for this.
Mr. President, you had the opportunity of being a great president. But, you abandoned honesty and integrity for your Marxist ideology and your lust for power. Glenn Beck was correct when he said that you and your associates are collapsing the system because that is exactly what you are doing.
You’ve weakened the economy to a near state of disrepair. The dollar has sunk and prices are up. More people are out of work and businesses are looking at even more ways to cut costs in preparation for your massive takeover of the economy. This will result in further unemployment and a decrease in the quality of our goods while prices continue to rise.
You and your union thugs are doing what Marxists have done throughout centuries. It happened in Rome, Germany after WWI, the French Revolution, and the Bolshevik Revolution. Those who wanted a socialist utopia created anarchy by collapsing the current economy. Afterward, the ones who caused the problem step in with the solution. The people, being desperate and frightened, accept these “saviors” only to regret it later as their quality of life sinks and their freedom disappears. This is what has happened recently in the United States. Our own government, with their big government regulations, caused the housing market crash, inflation, tumbling wages, loss of jobs, and the continued demise of the dollar. Through you, the same government steps in with a solution: increase in the size of the government and an increase in government spending, thus choking what little free enterprise and liberty are left.
Mr. President, on the outside you appear to be like everyone else. You are clean cut and well dressed, even pleasing to look at. But underneath all of that beats the black heart of a soulless man whose foul stench and deeds are consuming this great country. If you do not put a stop to this madness, we will all sink into the black hole of socialism’s disease.
Sincerely,

Lady Liberty

October 23, 2009

Dear Mr. President,

Pardon me while I refuse to worship the very ground you walk on and refuse to sing praises to you. You already have a bunch of children indoctrinated by useful idiots to sing praises to a man who cares only for himself and his selfish gains. You must be proud that children are being taught to worship you. I’m sure you watch the video daily on You Tube with that smug smile on your face while fulfilling your constant need for praise and to be admired. These songs used to be sung to praise Jesus or America’s heritage. Now the lyrics have been changed to honor you, you who has done nothing to earn your lot in life. You are a tyrant who has betrayed this country so that you can bring about your socialist reforms all in the name of social justice. The ninth level of hell awaits you, sir, as it does all traitors.

But this praise does fall in line with the current school system in this country that rewards failure instead of success and you are failing to win the war in Afghanistan. General McChrystal has asked for more troops. Why have you not sent them? Why do you continue to piddle around with indecision? You meet with a war council to determine the proper strategy for Afghanistan when your general on the field has a strategy and undoubtedly informed you of it, assuming that you even bother to listen to him. You are not a military man, Mr. President, and neither are any of the members of your council. General McChrystal has a strategy and needs more troops to see it through. Send him the troops. We have a chance to win this war. Your indecision will cause us to lose. But, this is what you want, isn’t it? You talked about winning in Afghanistan during your presidential campaign and have yet to follow through. I do not think you ever had any intention of winning the war. Those speeches were a ploy to get you elected.

When was the last time you had a conversation with General McChrystal? February? Do you even care what he has to say about the situation in Afghanistan? He is the General leading our men and women against the terrorists in Afghanistan and unless you have someone better able to do the job, I suggest you listen to him and give him what he needs to win. Considering your lack of leadership, it is unlikely that you could appoint anyone to do a better job than General McChrystal.

Let me get to the real reasons why you refuse to send General McChrystal more troops:

1. It would make General McChrystal the center of attention, thus taking the spotlight away from you.

2. It would mean a stronger stance on the War On Terror; something you are afraid of doing. You do not even call this the War on Terror anymore. You pander to the Islamic world; frightened of angering the poor little Muslims. (Unless you have secretly retained your Muslim identity and therefore are helping them take over Western Civilization by weakening the United States.)

3. Following General McChrystal’s advice would prove that George Bush was correct in invading Iraq and Afghanistan. This would go against your desire to ruin your predecessor by constantly blaming him for your troubles and for a needless war. You knew what you were inheriting when you first campaigned for the presidency. What the nation is currently suffering now is a direct result of YOUR policies. You are incapable of accepting responsibility for your actions. Instead, you continue to blame Bush and ram legislation down America’s throat that will result in bloating the size of the Federal government, a bigger deficit, higher taxes, higher unemployment, less jobs in the private sector, and a collapsed economy as America’s prosperity weakens and the vulturous nations of the world pick us apart.

4. You do not want to win in Afghanistan. A victory would mean a stronger and more powerful America. You do not want America to be strong. Your refusal to do what needs to be done in Afghanistan is proof enough. But you have also vowed to disarm the United States of her nuclear weapons at a time when our enemies have grown bolder and show no fear of retaliation from us should we be attacked. The closing of Gitmo without any plan of what to do with its prisoners and the pulling out of Iraq before we even finished freeing them from the terrorists that moved there are other examples of your wish to weaken the U.S.

It appears that the only war you are waging is that on freedom of speech, the press, and the right of the people to openly oppose you. For now your focus has been discrediting Fox News. Your problem with Fox News is the fact that they are reporting the facts about ACORN’s corruption, its influence on you, and that it will receive federal money thanks to your “stimulus” bill. Fox News continues to report the number of czars you continue to appoint without senate approval, save for maybe 9 of the 35. Fox reports who these czars are, their radical ideas and rantings, and how they are the ones advising you. They report on the special interests that will benefit from you Health Care Bill: SEIU, ACORN, the Drug Companies that gave $100 million to support your socializing of medicine.[i] Fox News even reports the promises that you have broken thus far. They are the only news organization that is critical of you. And you cannot stand criticism. Your disdain for Fox News, and any opposition, comes through in your speeches. Your press secretary, Robert Gibbs, treats the Fox News correspondent with disgust and continually demonstrates his loathing for Fox. His haughty reference to Glen Beck’s and Sean Hannity’s shows on Fox portrays his hatred of the dissenting opinion offered by the network.

You hate Beck and Hannity because they report what the media will not, but they freely tell people what they think of you and any politician who is endangering this country. You and your ilk have yet to refute any of their claims. If what they say if false, present the evidence. Instead you engage in character assassination. You attempt to make people feel guilty for listening to them. None of you can prove that Fox News has made false claims.

Let us face the facts, Mr. President. You hate Fox News because they, unlike the other networks, refused to bow before you and worship at your feet. You hate Fox because they report the news whether it makes you look good or bad. You hate them because they offer shows with more conservative viewpoints than what ABC or NBC has to offer. But most importantly, you hate Fox News because people are listening to them and waking up. People are no longer remaining ignorant of what you and your minions are doing in Washington. These same people are wondering if they made the right choice in voting for you. These people are getting together in open opposition to the direction you wish to take America. Fox News is a messenger that refused to fall in line with your demands. They are a messenger that people are listening to. People like you thrive on the ignorance of others. Therefore you have waged war against Fox in the hopes of killing the messenger and forcing people to once again be subjected to the beat of the Marxist drum.

So you have had people from your administration accusing Fox News of being an arm of the GOP, a form of talk radio, or more commentary and therefore not a real news organization like CNN. By painting Fox as an opinion piece, you are hoping people will dismiss them as rhetoric. Your tactics have had the opposite effect. Fox’s ratings have skyrocketed and continue to climb. Continue on your course if you will. The more you attack Fox News, the more people listen to them. For a man who was trumped up as being intelligent your common sense is lacking.

Talk radio is also under attack by you and your people. Your efforts to reinstate the so called Fairness Doctrine under a different name is an effort to silence those like Rush Limbaugh by limiting the number of conservative voices allowed on the airwaves if not eradicating them completely. You state that there aren’t enough liberal voices on talk radio and that it’s just unfair. Well, Mr. President, that is how the free market works. People tune into talk radio for the conservative viewpoint and the bits of news they cannot find anywhere else. Why would people wish to listen to whiny liberals on talk radio when they can listen to them all day on every street corner and when they are forced to listen to the likes of you, Pelosi, and Reid every night on ABC, CBS, NBC, and MSNBC?

There are other targets in your sights. Those individuals who oppose you and have begun questioning you and your policies. You and your ilk dismissed the Tea Party goers as ignorant, racist, homophobic rednecks acting in accordance with Fox News, talk radio, and the GOP. Naturally you have no evidence to back up your claims. The Tea Party participants are average folk who are tired of being lied to, tired of being used by people like you, and tired of the government doing whatever it pleases with no regard for the health of the country and the liberties it is charged to protect. The U.S. Constitution was written to shield people from the government and radical politicians such as you, Mr. President. Quit circumventing it.

Lastly, there are your attempts to control the internet. All of those individual bloggers who question you and report news stories that NBC &c. will not. The internet breathed new life into conservatives allowing them to voice their views and find others who felt and thought as they do. It provided an outlet to escape the hum drum of progressives. They are able to refute the progressive movement which has sickened American since the late 1800s. Mr. President, you have been pushing for legislation that will allow you control over the internet in an attempt to silence the opposition there. (Siezing power over those businesses that conduct commerce over the internet would be an added bonus.) If you silence the bloggers you can isolate them and make conservatives feel alone and fearful of standing against you.

All of these measures are a direct violation of the first amendment. I do not expect a tyrant like you to care about such violations. You have disregarded the U.S. Constitution your entire political career by voting for legislation that expanded government, when you did bother to vote while in the Senate. Marxists, such as yourself, cannot stand dissenting opinion.

Mr. President, you have an insatiable need to be loved, admired, and worshipped the way those school children are being taught to do. So you do what you do best. You attempt to take away people’s rights, rights that are not of man. You take away individual choice by eliminating the free market through imposed regulations.

But be warned, Mr. President. You may win, but it will only be a Pyrrhic victory. History has shown that traitors and tyrants meet bitter ends.

Sincerely,

Lady Liberty

August 20, 2009

Dear Mr. President,

Tuesday, August 11, you graced us with another Town Hall meeting. This seems to be the only thing you are good at. You have become quite adept at using these staged events to push the liberal agenda. Once again your entire speech was filled with one lie after another. You never answered any of the questions (if they could be called that) that were asked. Are you incapable of answering questions directly? Or are you too much of a coward?

You mentioned in your speech that people “are held hostage by health insurance.” People are not held hostage by insurance companies. Whether an insurance company pays for something or not, people still have access to high quality medical care. Hospitals will work with individuals who are unable to pay up front. Apparently you are under that assumption that people will only receive the treatment they need if their insurance agrees to pay the cost. But here’s a question: if the government insurance program refuses to pay for medical care, then by the same logic are you not held hostage by the government?

Once again you want us to believe that the stimulus bill is working. If so where is the evidence? The only jobs created are federal and state jobs. The only people benefiting from your stimulus are Union leaders. Unions have always killed capitalism. Government intervention destroys prosperous economies. Private business is what we need. Many businesses have closed their doors, or laid off employees to cover the rising costs that your Stimulus package put on them. Unemployment is close to 10%. And as you’ve said, only a third of the money was spent. If this is the result after only spending 1/3 of the allotted money, why spend the rest. Why don’t you and Congress give the rest of that $787 billion back to the people? The people have always been able to spend their hard earned money better and more efficiently than the government.

The Recovery Act is a failure. You love to mention Bush’s failed economic policies. Unemployment stayed fairly constant that last eight years, as the chart below indicates.

Figures from www.infoplease.com & http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=usunemployment&met=unemployment_rate&tdim=true&q=current+U.S.+unemployment+rate

When are you going to quit blaming Bush for your problems?

True to your Marxist principles, you instigate class warfare. The wealthy Americans are not paying enough. In truth, the wealthiest Americans pay more in taxes than anyone else. You stated, “It doesn’t mean we can just sit back and do nothing while so many families are still struggling, because even before this recession hit we had an economy that was working pretty well for the wealthiest Americans, it was working pretty well for Wall Street bankers, it was working pretty well for big corporations, but it wasn’t working so well for everybody else. It was an economy of bubbles and busts.” Karl Marx would be so proud of you. The thing is, when the wealthy prosper, so do the poor. A free market economy always has “bubbles and busts”. The ups are usually long lived and the downturns are short. However, when government steps in to right wrongs that never existed those economic downturns last a long time. This is what you have been doing since January. Though you are only doing what our government has steadily done since F.D.R.

A free market society is the best society any nation can have. It gives all people the opportunity to succeed, but it does not guarantee results. The wealthiest Americans exist because they took the risk of seeking fortune, worked hard, and succeeded. They refused to settle for mediocrity. What you are pushing for is equal poverty. Your health plan will force everyone to pay all that they earn in order to support it. It will destroy business and destroy the economy. This has happened in every nation that has implemented such a plan. The results will be no different here.

Whereas many of the poor in this country remain so because they are dependent on the government for their livelihood. These people are on welfare, collect food stamps, and have Medicaid for health insurance. They have no incentive or desire to improve themselves and their lives.

You yourself are wealthy, Mr. President. You have more money than people can dream of. Many in your administration are wealthy. Are you, or they, willing to give up your wealth to someone who has less than $10,000? Are you willing to donate your money to a non profit charity that lives among the poor day after day trying to help them find work? Since you are unwilling to sacrifice your wealth for the sake of another, then do not force others to do it through a government mandate. You hypocrite.

You and your ilk always make it a crime for people or businesses to create profit from business transactions. You accuse the drug companies and insurance companies of making more money than they should. Who are you to decide how much they should make? Who are you to decide how much anyone should make? Those companies only stay alive because they make a profit and those profits are reinvested in the company. That is how business works. No one has the right to decide how much an individual or a business makes.

You try to use the fact that UPS and FedEx are doing just fine while competing against the Post Office as a reason for government run health care. “It’s the Post Office that’s always having problems,” you said. Maybe this is why the government should not run anything. The Post Office loses money every year. What will make government health care any different? FedEx and UPS came around because of the increasing inefficiency of the post office. They have proven that the government cannot run a business. Insurance, whether health or other, is a business.

You mentioned, “Medicare and Medicaid are on an unsustainable path. Medicare is slated to go into the red in about eight to 10 years.” If Medicare and Medicaid will be bankrupt in 10 years, then why are you expanding these unsustainable programs to cover everyone? Medicare and Medicaid are both government insurance programs done on a smaller scale. If they are bankrupt after 40 years, what makes you think you can just expand them on a national scale and have different results? Trying to use these two programs as a reason to have nationalized health care is a flawed argument.

Another aspect of our current health system that you claim is a problem is the fact that specialists are paid more than general practitioners. There is a reason for that. General practitioners see a wide variety of patients every day. They see more patients than the specialists. Because they see more people per day they can charge less per patient without suffering a huge deduction in pay.

Specialists only concentrate on one area of the medical field. They go through more years of school than your general practitioners. They only see patients that pertain to there area of expertise. A Cardiologist only sees patients with major heart problems. Oncologists see only cancer patients. And so on. That is their specialty. You wouldn’t send someone with a sore throat to these people. You also wouldn’t want a general practitioner treating you if you had cancer or a heart attack. Again, who are you to decide how much a doctor can or cannot make? Doctors are businessmen. Their practices are businesses. Setting restrictions on how much a physician earns compels them to treat less people and not care if their patient get well or not.

You contradicted yourself later when you mentioned that you managed to get “something right like Medicare.” How could the government have gotten Medicare right when it is bankrupt? You said yourself that it is headed on the road to bankruptcy. But you insist that the government got it right. If you believe this, then you have admitted that you think the right course for America is to spend it in to oblivion while taking complete control of private industry.

You addressed on person’s concerns by stating that Medicare benefits will not be cut to pay for this public option. One problem: about a month before you passed a proposal of how to pay for government run health care. One this proposal were cuts in Medicare and the supposed savings from these cuts would help pay for this health care reform of yours. Which is it?

Another portion of your speech states:

“Under the reform we’re proposing, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.

You will not be waiting in any lines. This is not about putting the government in charge of your health insurance. I don’t believe anyone should be in charge of your health insurance decisions but you and your doctor. I don’t think government bureaucrats should be meddling, but I also don’t think insurance company bureaucrats should be meddling. That’s the health care system I believe in.”

Mr. President, why do you continue to lie to us? Page 16 of the House Bill begins a list of requirements that must be met in order for individuals to be allowed to keep their current insurance plan. If none of those measures are met, they lose their insurance, forcing them on the government option. How is that allowing people to keep their current health insurance? There is a similar list for employer based insurance.

This bill has provisions for establishing advisory boards for everything: preventative care, use of medical practices, care received, prescriptions and so. With all of these health advisory boards, not only is there going to be a new bureaucracy formed, meaning increase government control, but what is to keep these boards from determining who your doctor is, what medical care you will be allowed to receive, or how much care you will receive? These boards will be headed by government bureaucrats. Who controls them? Another bureaucrat?

Either you do not have a clue of what is in this bill, or you do and do not care. I believe it is a combination of both. You know full well that this supposed reform imposes new taxes, cuts Medicare benefits, rations care, dictates the kind of medicine people can have and extends government control over every aspect of people’s lives. You know this and you do not care if it results in economic disaster, Americans being denied health care, or kills the ingenuity and initiative that drove us to develop better treatments for diseases.

Mr. President, your entire speech at this meeting is the equivalent of what comes out of a horse’s ass. You couldn’t even answer the pitiful questions that were asked. Instead, you continued to sell us a bushel of lemons. You claim to care about average American. You are a liar. You don’t care about the people. You just use them to get your government programs passed. You use the status quo, “the people,” to get what you want and if these measures fail you can stay afloat by claiming that you were only trying to help. Or, that your measures kept things from being worse.

Sincerely,

Lady Liberty

This is a copy of an article at CNN.com.  You can read the original at: http://money.cnn.com/2009/07/24/news/economy/health_care_reform_obama.fortune/index.htm

5 freedoms you’d lose in health care reform

If you read the fine print in the Congressional plans, you’ll find that a lot of cherished aspects of the current system would disappear.

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FIXING HEALTH CARE

• White House hits watchdog on Medicare plan
• Little savings seen from Medicare panel
• Obama plays up small biz health care pain
• The ‘new’ new tax on the rich
• 5 freedoms you’d lose in health care reform
• Health care’s future may already exist

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NEW YORK (Fortune) — In promoting his health-care agenda, President Obama has repeatedly reassured Americans that they can keep their existing health plans — and that the benefits and access they prize will be enhanced through reform.

A close reading of the two main bills, one backed by Democrats in the House and the other issued by Sen. Edward Kennedy’s Health committee, contradict the President’s assurances. To be sure, it isn’t easy to comb through their 2,000 pages of tortured legal language. But page by page, the bills reveal a web of restrictions, fines, and mandates that would radically change your health-care coverage.

If you prize choosing your own cardiologist or urologist under your company’s Preferred Provider Organization plan (PPO), if your employer rewards your non-smoking, healthy lifestyle with reduced premiums, if you love the bargain Health Savings Account (HSA) that insures you just for the essentials, or if you simply take comfort in the freedom to spend your own money for a policy that covers the newest drugs and diagnostic tests — you may be shocked to learn that you could lose all of those good things under the rules proposed in the two bills that herald a health-care revolution.

In short, the Obama platform would mandate extremely full, expensive, and highly subsidized coverage — including a lot of benefits people would never pay for with their own money — but deliver it through a highly restrictive, HMO-style plan that will determine what care and tests you can and can’t have. It’s a revolution, all right, but in the wrong direction.

Let’s explore the five freedoms that Americans would lose under Obamacare:

1. Freedom to choose what’s in your plan

The bills in both houses require that Americans purchase insurance through “qualified” plans offered by health-care “exchanges” that would be set up in each state. The rub is that the plans can’t really compete based on what they offer. The reason: The federal government will impose a minimum list of benefits that each plan is required to offer.

Today, many states require these “standard benefits packages” — and they’re a major cause for the rise in health-care costs. Every group, from chiropractors to alcohol-abuse counselors, do lobbying to get included. Connecticut, for example, requires reimbursement for hair transplants, hearing aids, and in vitro fertilization.

The Senate bill would require coverage for prescription drugs, mental-health benefits, and substance-abuse services. It also requires policies to insure “children” until the age of 26. That’s just the starting list. The bills would allow the Department of Health and Human Services to add to the list of required benefits, based on recommendations from a committee of experts. Americans, therefore, wouldn’t even know what’s in their plans and what they’re required to pay for, directly or indirectly, until after the bills become law.

2. Freedom to be rewarded for healthy living, or pay your real costs

As with the previous example, the Obama plan enshrines into federal law one of the worst features of state legislation: community rating. Eleven states, ranging from New York to Oregon, have some form of community rating. In its purest form, community rating requires that all patients pay the same rates for their level of coverage regardless of their age or medical condition.

Americans with pre-existing conditions need subsidies under any plan, but community rating is a dubious way to bring fairness to health care. The reason is twofold: First, it forces young people, who typically have lower incomes than older workers, to pay far more than their actual cost, and gives older workers, who can afford to pay more, a big discount. The state laws gouging the young are a major reason so many of them have joined the ranks of uninsured.

Under the Senate plan, insurers would be barred from charging any more than twice as much for one patient vs. any other patient with the same coverage. So if a 20-year-old who costs just $800 a year to insure is forced to pay $2,500, a 62-year-old who costs $7,500 would pay no more than $5,000.

Second, the bills would ban insurers from charging differing premiums based on the health of their customers. Again, that’s understandable for folks with diabetes or cancer. But the bills would bar rewarding people who pursue a healthy lifestyle of exercise or a cholesterol-conscious diet. That’s hardly a formula for lower costs. It’s as if car insurers had to charge the same rates to safe drivers as to chronic speeders with a history of accidents.

3. Freedom to choose high-deductible coverage

The bills threaten to eliminate the one part of the market truly driven by consumers spending their own money. That’s what makes a market, and health care needs more of it, not less.

Hundreds of companies now offer Health Savings Accounts to about 5 million employees. Those workers deposit tax-free money in the accounts and get a matching contribution from their employer. They can use the funds to buy a high-deductible plan — say for major medical costs over $12,000. Preventive care is reimbursed, but patients pay all other routine doctor visits and tests with their own money from the HSA account. As a result, HSA users are far more cost-conscious than customers who are reimbursed for the majority of their care.

The bills seriously endanger the trend toward consumer-driven care in general. By requiring minimum packages, they would prevent patients from choosing stripped-down plans that cover only major medical expenses. “The government could set extremely low deductibles that would eliminate HSAs,” says John Goodman of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a free-market research group. “And they could do it after the bills are passed.”

4. Freedom to keep your existing plan

This is the freedom that the President keeps emphasizing. Yet the bills appear to say otherwise. It’s worth diving into the weeds — the territory where most pundits and politicians don’t seem to have ventured.

The legislation divides the insured into two main groups, and those two groups are treated differently with respect to their current plans. The first are employees covered by the Employee Retirement Security Act of 1974. ERISA regulates companies that are self-insured, meaning they pay claims out of their cash flow, and don’t have real insurance. Those are the GEs (GE, Fortune 500) and Time Warners (TWX, Fortune 500) and most other big companies.

The House bill states that employees covered by ERISA plans are “grandfathered.” Under ERISA, the plans can do pretty much what they want — they’re exempt from standard packages and community rating and can reward employees for healthy lifestyles even in restrictive states.

But read on.

The bill gives ERISA employers a five-year grace period when they can keep offering plans free from the restrictions of the “qualified” policies offered on the exchanges. But after five years, they would have to offer only approved plans, with the myriad rules we’ve already discussed. So for Americans in large corporations, “keeping your own plan” has a strict deadline. In five years, like it or not, you’ll get dumped into the exchange. As we’ll see, it could happen a lot earlier.

The outlook is worse for the second group. It encompasses employees who aren’t under ERISA but get actual insurance either on their own or through small businesses. After the legislation passes, all insurers that offer a wide range of plans to these employees will be forced to offer only “qualified” plans to new customers, via the exchanges.

The employees who got their coverage before the law goes into effect can keep their plans, but once again, there’s a catch. If the plan changes in any way — by altering co-pays, deductibles, or even switching coverage for this or that drug — the employee must drop out and shop through the exchange. Since these plans generally change their policies every year, it’s likely that millions of employees will lose their plans in 12 months.

5. Freedom to choose your doctors

The Senate bill requires that Americans buying through the exchanges — and as we’ve seen, that will soon be most Americans — must get their care through something called “medical home.” Medical home is similar to an HMO. You’re assigned a primary care doctor, and the doctor controls your access to specialists. The primary care physicians will decide which services, like MRIs and other diagnostic scans, are best for you, and will decide when you really need to see a cardiologists or orthopedists.

Under the proposals, the gatekeepers would theoretically guide patients to tests and treatments that have proved most cost-effective. The danger is that doctors will be financially rewarded for denying care, as were HMO physicians more than a decade ago. It was consumer outrage over despotic gatekeepers that made the HMOs so unpopular, and killed what was billed as the solution to America’s health-care cost explosion.

The bills do not specifically rule out fee-for-service plans as options to be offered through the exchanges. But remember, those plans — if they exist — would be barred from charging sick or elderly patients more than young and healthy ones. So patients would be inclined to game the system, staying in the HMO while they’re healthy and switching to fee-for-service when they become seriously ill. “That would kill fee-for-service in a hurry,” says Goodman.

In reality, the flexible, employer-based plans that now dominate the landscape, and that Americans so cherish, could disappear far faster than the 5 year “grace period” that’s barely being discussed.

Companies would have the option of paying an 8% payroll tax into a fund that pays for coverage for Americans who aren’t covered by their employers. It won’t happen right away — large companies must wait a couple of years before they opt out. But it will happen, since it’s likely that the tax will rise a lot more slowly than corporate health-care costs, especially since they’ll be lobbying Washington to keep the tax under control in the righteous name of job creation.

The best solution is to move to a let-freedom-ring regime of high deductibles, no community rating, no standard benefits, and cross-state shopping for bargains (another market-based reform that’s strictly taboo in the bills). I’ll propose my own solution in another piece soon on Fortune.com. For now, we suffer with a flawed health-care system, but we still have our Five Freedoms. Call them the Five Endangered Freedoms. 

7/26/2009

Dear Mr. President,

I want to thank you for doing in six months what many liberals failed to do in 70 years. You have successfully turned us into a socialist nation.   (note the sarcasm)

You rushed through the stimulus bill saying that it was imperative in order to stop the recession. You promised us jobs, a tax cut, and a decrease in the cost of living. You told us that the stimulus bill would do all these things. You told us that this bill would keep the unemployment rate from exceeding 8%. It now sits at 9.7% and is well on its way to being 10%. Where are all the jobs you promised us? And do not tell me about the teacher that was spared the pink slip or all of the state and federal jobs that exist to contend with the bureaucracy your bill created. Where are the jobs for the manual laborers? What about the small businesses that have closed their doors? Those are the jobs we need. It appears that the only people that have benefitted from this bill are state and federal employees. The number one beneficiary is the Federal Government.

You promised us fiscal responsibility. In the last six months where have you or your administration demonstrated fiscal responsibility? That Stimulus Bill cost $787 billion dollars. You had to borrow money from China to help pay for it. Clearly, the United States is bankrupt if you are borrowing money to pay for a bill that is supposed to stimulate the economy. How is that being fiscally responsible? What was in that 1,600 page bill? Did you even read it? I think not, considering you rushed it through during your first week as president. You promised no more pork, but how can a bill that it over a 1,000 pages long not have any pork?

In a recent address of yours, you said that the stimulus package was doing exactly what it was designed to do. I thought it was supposed to promote economic growth. Instead we are getting an economic collapse. So if your statement is true, then that means this bill was designed to destroy the economy, create unemployment, and bring fear to the American people.

And now you want us to accept your health care reform bill. You are adamant about getting it passed before the end of the year. Why the rush? What is in this bill that you do not want people to know about? Could it be that you know within a year’s time you will not have the majority you need to pass your agenda? This bill has the pungent smell of dead fish. It can’t be about reform. You are just expanding an already broken system and shoving everyone into it. We have already proven in this country that government run health care does not work. Medicare and Medicaid are two government run health care programs on a limited scale and they are both bankrupt. The people on these programs do not get the care they need because they have to wait for approval from the government.

Why are we following the model of Europe or even Canada when it comes to health care? Their government run systems are failing. People leave those countries and come to the United States for medical care. Are you so arrogant that you believe you can do it better? Are you so stupid that you refuse to learn from the mistakes of others? Do you truly care about the best interest of America, or are you only concerned about what helps Barack Obama? But most importantly, will be subject the very system that you want to put the American people on?

This health care reform bill is too conveniently timed. Most people without health insurance are unemployed. The unemployment rate is dangerously close to 10%. People are frightened that if something happened they won’t get to see a doctor much less be able to pay for it. And here you step in to save the day with another expansive government program. Very, very convenient.

And why so silent on Cap and Trade? I know the bill is being pushed through Congress. Please explain why we need to tax the hell out of businesses in order to offset global warming. The passage of this bill will prove disastrous for this country, especially since we are in a recession. Cap and Trade has never worked in the past in reducing carbon emissions. It did destroy businesses. You passed a stimulus bill to stimulate the economy. Now you want to pass Cap and Trade which is known for destroying the economy. Don’t the two cancel each other out?

Your foreign policy is no better than what you have done domestically. You routinely call America an arrogant nation. You insult your own country overseas mentioning it with disdain. Not once have you defended America. Do you hate your own country so much that you are incapable of talking about the very things that make America great? Not once have you mentioned what we have given the world. The United States feeds most of the world’s population. We are always there to help those that desire freedom from tyranny and oppression. We have defeated some of the worst tyrants in history for the sake of the world.

You are the President of the United States. It is your duty to protect and defend the American people. You have failed to perform such a task. When North Korea vowed to wipe the United States off the map, you said nothing. When Somali pirates took Americans hostage, you waited over a week to finally do something. It was only when people started asking questions that you finally sent in the Navy Seals to free the hostages. You won’t even address the atrocities that are happening in Iran. You have snubbed Israel, our only ally in the Middle East. Instead you shake hands and act all chummy with the likes of Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, and Raul Castro. You derided the Honduran people for defending their country and constitution from a man who tried to declare himself a president for life. Why do you like dictators so much?

You promised us hope and change. Instead of change you brought us more of the same. Instead of hope we have despair. You lied to us, Mr. President. You sold us a bill of goods. You conned the American people into voting for you. You have demonstrated that you are unfit to be the President of the United States.

You are a sniveling little weasel. A man who slithered his way into the Oval Office on false promises and false hope. You have systematically taken over elements of this country that were once in the hands of the private sector, the people. You have systematically usurped the Constitution. You have betrayed the trust of the American people. You have betrayed the U.S. Constitution. You, Sir, are a traitor.

Signed,

Lady Liberty