I need to be serious for a few minutes and ask for your help. The Congress of the United States is currently considering legislation that will eventually destroy the healthcare system in this country, as well as bankrupting us in the process. Please write AND call AND email as many politicians as you can. Start with your Represenative and Senators and go from there. I’m posting my email below. Write your own, even if it’s just one line that says “Please vote against the healthcare bill.”
I am writing to urge you to vote against the healthcare bill that is currently being considered in Congress.
I don’t even know how to begin to express my dismay that this legislation is even being considered. I find it appalling economically, morally, and legally. The government run healthcare that already exists in this country is broken; Medicare and Medicaid are rife with fraud and abuse, the VA system is difficult to use and the care is substandard, and the deplorable conditions at Walter Reed gave us a glimpse into what we can all expect from government healthcare.
President Obama has said that this legislation will bring competition to the healthcare industry. It will not. Private insurance companies that have to make a profit to succeed can not compete with an entity that takes the money it needs by force and obscures its true costs through taxes. When there is competition there are winners and losers, some companies fail and others succeed. But politicians will never allow their insurance provider to fail. They will raise taxes, cut benefits and change the rules that private insurers are required to operate under in order to insure the Government’s “success”.
For the government to tax people at the rate at which the U.S already taxes its citizens amounts to usury, to increase it by the levels needed to pay for even the projected cost of this health care bill is shameful. People work for their money. Whether they are making minimum wage or millions of dollars a year should be of no concern to the Government. That money is the physical representation of the amount of time that person spent earning that money, and to confiscate is to lay claim to their life. To confiscate to give to another in goods or services is theft.
This bill will do nothing other than add cost, complexity, and limit choice. Small business owners will bear the brunt of the burden in higher taxes and penalties. If you want to make positive changes to the way healthcare is provided in this country you should work to decrease mandatory minimum coverage laws, pursue tort reform to decrease the cost of malpractice insurance, and gradually reduce the tax breaks given to employers while increasing tax breaks or providing tax credits to individuals for the cost of health insurance. These things would reduce the cost to doctors and individuals while providing individuals with an incentive to shop for insurance and medical service based on price, thereby increasing competition and further reducing cost. All of this could be accomplished without increasing taxes or expanding government. The healthcare system in the United States is the best in the world and to reduce to the state of socialized medicine in Canada or Great Britain is a tragedy. Please I urge you to vote against this bill.
Sincerely,
James Byrd