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.

Subscribe to Economy

feed://rss.cnn.com/rss/money_news_economy.rss

Paste this link into your favorite RSS desktop reader

See all CNNMoney.com RSS FEEDS (close)

Photos

Sick pay: 9 stories of health costs

From $10,000 deductibles to no coverage at all, CNNMoney.com readers and viewers reveal their battle with the rising costs of health insurance.

View photos

Quick Vote

Would you be willing to pay more in taxes for the promise of reducing your health care costs?

• Yes
• No

or View results

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

More from Fortune

The Ben and Barry Show 3.0 Why private equity is in a deep freeze ‘Car Wars:’ A peek into the automotive future

FORTUNE 500 Current Issue Subscribe to Fortune

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.