Today the senate votes on whether to close debate and move on to conference meetings with the House and forge out the biggest grab into the personal lives of Americans that we have ever seen. The 2000 page bill is filled with outrageous items that clearly signal that this is not about fixing the health care issues in American but changing how we live and who decides how we live. Here are some examples:
1. Senate bill has govt funding for abortions.
2. The bill will penalize any person, or more importantly, any company that does not provide insurance for their employees.
3. The bill provides 100 million dollars to the state of Louisiana to save its Medicare funding - you will note that Mary Landieru, it's senator, is on the fence and this is Harry Reid's way of "buying her vote."
4. It provides a public option that will open the door to start "closing the doors" of private insurance because private insurance cannot "print money" and drive prices down to close out its competition.
5. The price tag is 843 billion dollars - however most of what the govt ever proposes is way short - true estimates are upwards of 2-3 trillion.
6. They will begin collecting taxes on this bill immediately BUT will not enact any of it until 2013 - the year after the NEXT presidential election - convenient!!
Here are some mind blowing facts:
a) There are 300 billion people in America -- of this some 12 million people NEED health care (they throw around 47 million but when you remove illegal aliens; children who have S-CHIP; college age; and people who self insure) we are talking about 12 million.
b) Divide 12 million into 1 trillion - lets just give them the money and set up a HSA!
c) Consider the fact that "everyone" - all 300 billion now will go looking for a yearly physical - the number of General Practitioners is declining and will so after this bill. I will have to book my physical - two years in advance -- and still get bumped by the exponential emergencies that now will flood the system.
d) The GNP (Gross Nation Product) is at 27 trillion - 22 trillion is spoken for that leaves 5 trillion - health care in the US in 2008 was 2.5 trillion - we cannot sustain any more debt to our economy - this will collapse the system.
c) None of the bills - either house or senate addressed - tort reform and getting the lawyers off hospital and doctors back (which drives up malpractice).... it did not open up state line for insurance companies to compete.... it did not clearly limit illegal aliens from getting insurance because it did not require government ID for entrance into the public option.
I called both my senators - even though 65% of Americans oppose this legislation - they will go ahead with it. No one is listening and worse --- all this angst and all this money will not truly solve the problem of health care costs -- it will cost our govt (ultimately the American people) trillions of dollars!!!