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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (12634)	12/24/2009 12:06:04 PM
From: Peter Dierks	2 Recommendations Respond to of 42652

Voting Against Government-Run Health Care By Senator Tom Coburn December 24, 2009 This vote is indeed historic. This Congress will be remembered for its arrogance, corruption and stupidity. In the year of 2009, a Congress ignored the coming economic storm and impending bankruptcy of our entitlement programs and embarked on an ideological crusade to bring our nation as close to single-payer, government-run health care as possible. If this bill becomes law, future generations will rue this day and I will do everything in my power to work toward its repeal. This bill will ration care, cut Medicare, increase premiums, fund abortion and bury our children in debt. This process was not compromise. This process was corruption. This bill passed because votes were bought and sold using the issue of abortion as a bargaining chip. The abortion provision alone makes this bill the most arrogant piece of legislation I have seen in Congress. Only the most condescending politician can believe it is appropriate to force Americans to pay for other people's abortions and to coerce medical professional to take the lives of unborn children. The president and his allies genuinely believe that expanding government's control over health care is the way to control health care costs, improve lives and extend life spans. I don't question their motives, but I do question their judgment. History has already judged this argument and put it in its ash heap. The experience of government-run health care in the United States and around the world shows that access to a government program is not access to health care. Forty percent of doctors restrict access to Medicaid patients. Medicare already rations care and denies medical claims at twice the rate of private insurers. Nations like the United Kingdom with government run health care routinely ration care based on cost, and Canadians flock to the United States to escape waiting lines. Neither nation, incidentally, has managed to control costs as promised. Our health care system needs to be reformed not because government's role has been too small but because it has been too big. Since the 1940's, government's role in health care has been expanded to the point that it controls 60 percent of our health care economy, according the non-partisan Congressional Research Service. If more government were the answer, health care would have been reformed long ago. Finally, like many Americans, I've been disappointed by the lack of civility in this debate. The backers of the Reid bill, in many cases, have been unwilling argue for what they believe in - a single-payer health care system controlled by Washington. Their hide the ball strategy led them to rush this process and ram the bill through on the eve of the most important Christian holiday when they hoped the American people wouldn't be watching. The rhetoric that will be remembered in this debate was not between elected officials but between elected officials and concerned citizens. The clear will of the public was not only ignored, but concerned citizens were personally attacked by politicians in power. The American people were derided as an angry mob, and were called evil-doers and unpatriotic by the leaders of the House and Senate. The civility double standard in the Senate has been beneath the dignity of this body. Throughout this debate, backers of the Reid bill argued that more Americans will die if we do nothing than if we pass their bill. In their view, those who disagreed were not advancing a different vision for reform but were using scare tactics. In my 25 years of practicing medicine I've treated countless patients who would have had their lives cut short had the Reid bill been in effect. I don't need to conjure up scare tactics or rely on talking points written by staff. I've seen cancers that would have gone undiagnosed, treatments that would have been denied, and care that would have been delayed had this bill been in effect. On the final day of debate, one of my colleagues said my argument about rationing was Exhibit A in their case about scare tactics before ignoring every substantive argument I've made against this bill. I would contend this bill is Exhibit A in the American people's case against Washington. Soon enough, the American people will have the opportunity to ration the terms of the elected officials in Washington who sought to impose their will on the public. Tom Coburn, M.D. is a U.S. Senator from Oklahoma. realclearpolitics.com

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (12634)	12/24/2009 12:13:31 PM
From: Peter Dierks	1 Recommendation Respond to of 42652

'Ubi Est Mea?' December 24, 2009 If nothing else, the acrimonious debate over health care reform has contributed some potent new expressions to the American political vocabulary. You heard weeks ago about "death panels." And the vaguely named "public option," which has nothing to do with finding a suitable men's room at the shopping mall. But what about the "Louisiana purchase" of 2009? Or the "Cornhusker kickback"? Or "U. Con"? Those are nicknames hung on some of the seedy backroom deals cut by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to secure the 60 votes he needs for passage of his $871 billion health care reform bill. Here's a translation of those terms, compliments of The Washington Post: --Louisiana purchase: The reported $100 million in extra Medicaid money secured for her state by Sen. Mary Landrieu. She has boasted she actually snared $300 million. --Cornhusker kickback: A similar $100 million for Sen. Ben Nelson's Nebraska. --U. Con: $100 million meant for a medical center in Sen. Chris Dodd's Connecticut. There also were special favors handed out to Vermont, Massachusetts, Montana, Iowa, Michigan and Florida. And that's just the stuff we know about so far. Remember, this is a 2,400-plus page bill. The bill is all but certain to be advanced in a vote Thursday morning. Next stop: a Senate-House conference committee, where dueling versions of health care legislation will be melded into one and where upright lawmakers will strip out all of the special interest bribes, er, payments made to senators in exchange for their votes. Just kidding! That's as likely as aspirin curing cancer. Likelier: More lawmakers clamoring to extort gazillions for their states. Guess who'll pay for all of this. And how has Reid reacted? "I don't know if there is a senator that doesn't have something in this bill that was important to them," he said Monday about what's become known as "cash for cloture." "And if they don't have something in it important to them, then it doesn't speak well of them." Sure. If a senator merely votes for a bill because it's the right thing to do, rather than it's the right thing to do if he gets $100 million in special benefits for his state, then he's a dope? Talk about twisted logic. We've seen this kind of shameful display before. To roughly paraphrase a famous line from President Barack Obama: It's not a Democratic thing. Or a Republican thing. It's a Congress thing. Remember what happened last year, as the economy shambled over a cliff and the House approved an $800 billion-plus rescue plan? Remember how some recalcitrant members of Congress were moved to switch their votes? Saving the economy from potential ruin wasn't enough of an incentive. Thus the bill came to include $2 million in tax breaks for the manufacturers of kids' wooden arrows, $192 million for rum producers, $148 million in tariff relief for U.S. wool fabric producers and $33 million for corporations operating in American Samoa. Oh, and $2 million to help people who commute to work on bicycles. There are plenty of winners and losers in the Senate health bill. Democrats removed a tax on cosmetic surgery (the "Botax") but added a tax on tanning salons. The tax on so-called Cadillac health plans remains, but the bill now exempts miners, construction workers, cops, firefighters, longshoremen and other union members who contribute so mightily to Democratic causes. Obama envisioned health care reform as a bipartisan effort. It hasn't turned out that way. The Dems wholly own the Senate and House bills. And public opinion be damned. But leaders of the two chambers still can show sense by dropping their noble pretensions that getting health care reform this far is all about . . . health care. Instead, this debacle evokes the all-purpose Chicago political motto proposed by the late columnist Mike Royko: "Ubi Est Mea?" -- "Where's Mine?" www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/chi-1224edit1dec24,0,3305796.story