Letter to my Senator re: Health Care Deform

Dear Senator Frank Lautenberg,

As I am sure you understand, you represent the citizens of New Jersey, not Republican or Democrat issues. And there is a great deal of opposition to this "government option" for health care that is being pushed in the House, Senate, and by the President. You have seen the reports of everyday people showing up at townhall meetings to express their feelings regarding this latest government expansion. It is widely disliked.

With these things in mind, I ask you to vote against wholesale change of the health care system in this country. The government doesn't need to get its hands into more of the citizen's business. The government doesn't need to get bigger, it needs to get smaller. This scale of change is not necessary, and during a recession is most definitely the wrong time to undertake it.

The best quality health care system in the world, one which people in other countries come to when theirs fails them, will be ruined by taking this step. Other steps and other ways can be taken to fix the things that do ail the U.S. health care system.

The funding of health care (insurance and medical costs) needs targeted change, change to the ease with which lawsuits may be brought against doctors and hospitals, and limits to rewards. TORT reform. And hospitals need help to recover the crippling costs they bear by uninsured people and illegal aliens who do not pay their bills. The federal mandate that hospitals help everyone needs to be dropped or funded. But that's not the same as a government health care option.

We don't need another entitlement program which will raise the deficit, raise the debt, and increase the monies that the government needs to collect from the citizens. Not to mention the fact that the government isn't doing so well with Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Amtrak, the Post Office, the Veterans hospitals, and many other large beauracracies.

Adding health care to the U.S. government's responsibilities is also unconstitutional. It is not the purview of the Federal government to administer health care, nor is it the government's business to force people to buy health insurance, debit their bank accounts to pay for it, force citizens into a government plan when insignificant changes are made to their private insurance, decide or be involved in end of life care, etc.

There are other roads to reform which are not so drastic, some of which have been put forward in the house and senate. I am all for working on fixing the things that don't work, but let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater here, and that's exactly what is going on.

And by all means, please read the bill before you vote on it. Crib notes by definition leave things un-noted.

All the best to you,
Brian M. Holmes