FixHealthCarePolicy

Ben, how about this...It's too damned expensive! The people who want/need it are not willing to pay for it. They want to have someone else pay for it. Hey, I know, the government can pay for it!
Last night during the rebroadcast of the committee hearings on this bill, discussion centered around the fact that the numbers presented to finance this bill were wrong. Everyone acknowledged this on both sides of the aisle!) The program would start with the government knowing they were charging too little to get people into it just so they could attract people into the program. The necessity to pay for the program with money people contributes would mean that the premium would have to be raised immediately. Several people on the committee raised the alarm that congress has a very bad track record of "taking care of business" when it comes to increasing costs of entitlement programs because their constituents don't like it. In fact we have three glaring examples of this: Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare. These three bastions to the success of government run entitlements are in the toilet to the tune of 76 Trillion dollars. Did you get that Trillion?! ( This is not my number. This is the number the senate committee was talking about last night!!!) Instead of giving control of more of our health care system over to the government, let's have them fix the one's they are in charge of now! Better yet, let's keep it out of the hands of the federal government entirely and spend that money getting government out of the way of the medical and insurance industries so a competitive, market driven solution, controlled by the consumer can work. And before you reply, "That won't work!" let me say, the only thing I have become convinced of is the government running healthcare will not work and it will bankrupt us and our children.

Uh, we also have a two tiered health care system, those who can afford coverage get it, those who can't don't get it, sometimes going into bankruptcy because of it. I'd rather have a system, like most europeans and canadians, that has a tiered system based on need, those who need care the most, get it first, even if that means wait times being a bit longer than we are used to. A tiered system based on ability to pay, as we have here, is wrong. We have a police department, fire department, libraries and municipalities all set up to cover everyone, thru payment of taxes and i think health care should be the exact same way.

Our private insurance, as you know, also implements "cust-cutting measures that limit patients access to physicians, specialists and medical services". Insurance companies, who actually make decisions about benefits and services, satnd to make money on our health care, and i for one am not convinced by your weak excuses why we shouldn't have a universal health plan, let alone a Public Option. At least come up with good arguments, Heritage.