Terry Stewart

To the editor,

Ron Tunning’s column on the manufactured health care “crisis” does a good job of describing half of the story. Unfortunately, he fails to recognize the nasty little details of the various plans floating about Congress. Notice I didn’t say “Obama’s plan”. That’s because Obama has NO plan. He simply wants to make good on his campaign promise to provide health insurance to all occupants of our country. Again, notice I didn’t say citizens because non citizens are included in his vision. That’s just one of many nasty little details I was talking about.

I agree that issues surrounding health care have been exaggerated, understated, overstated, made up or completely ignored. The root problem is that Congress and the president aren’t listening. They aren’t listening because they have absolutely NO idea what is in these various proposals. When reasonable people try to point out concerning details about the proposals, they are ignored, shut down or ridiculed. That kind of response from our representatives leads to anger and when that’s reported as “lies”, that leads to vicious anger and hatred. In speaking to a variety of people, I have actually been stunned that the protesters have been characterized as having been brought in by “organized groups”. How come the faces of protesters we see on the news are older retired folks, veterans, and parents with children? How come the opponents we see are holding handmade signs while the proponents are holding expensive professionally printed signs? Why is the president claiming he has the support of AARP when they are not claiming they support it? Who’s kidding who about organized groups involved in the health care hysteria?

It doesn’t take an expert to understand how this whole “government option” is going to work out. Let’s look at an example; I get a foot injury and think my ankle is broken. My private insurance requires me to first call my primary physician who gets $50 to $80 to send me to a foot expert. The foot expert gets $100 to $150 to tell me he believes it’s just a sprain but I need to get X-Rays to be sure. It’s obviously part of the process required by his insurance and paid for by mine. Some $1,500 later I’m using a very expensive ice bag and top dollar drugs to cure my sprained ankle. We all know there is a ton of waste in that whole process. This is the waste that we could all agree needs to be cut. So, with the government option we can now save money by listening to the doctor tell me that I have a sprained ankle, go home, take aspirin and ice it every 20 minutes. Excellent, we probably saved $1,000 on my silly ankle problem, BUT, a month later I still have a problem. My ankle was actually fractured slightly causing internal problems. I have an infection that leads to further complications and after exhaustive attempts to cure my ankle it appears it will have to be cut off to save my leg and life.

This could happen under either a private plan or a government plan. Under my private plan, however, I have legal recourse and can hold them liable. They carry insurance to cover such liabilities which aims to limit law suits by requiring all those “waste of money” procedures. Under the government option, what are my options? We are saving money by cutting the “waste” so who’s liable? I think most Americans know the answer to that question. The government plan can’t possibly give me the same legal options because those “unnecessary” procedures weren’t required and no one could have possibly known my ankle had an underlying problem. They would simply cut of my foot, save my leg and then send me on my way.

I’m not claiming that this is some evil plot by Democrats to “cut care”. It’s just an obvious byproduct of the solutions being discussed. We see this sort of thing happen in the government run Medicare and VA health care. The obvious conclusion means private insurance companies will still have to insure against “all” the risk and the government plan doesn’t have to. How will private insurance companies possibly compete?

I agree with Mr. Tunning when he states that private companies “limit care”. We GET THAT! With all its faults, we trust our private insurance companies far more than we trust the government. I’ve got to believe that if the insurance company won’t allow the procedure then they feel comfortable about facing any liability issues in the future. Isn’t that what keeps them honest? Does anybody really think the government is going to care about assumptions of liability? Just ask any senior citizen or veteran who’s been caught up in just problems.

Should the government do nothing? Absolutely NOT! What we need the government to do is change regulations to allow more competition and more private access for routine care. We need the government to STOP scarring people into believing this problem needs to be fixed NOW. Most Americans believe that the proposed government solution will make things far worse. Shouldn’t we slow down and work out a good solution rather than a rushed bad one? We need the government to be honest with the cost of any proposed solution. Only an idiot would believe that we could extend care to 40-million more people (with no money) and not expect it to land in the laps of those of us that all ready pay a ton of money for this and all the other new government spending. We need the government to stop claiming that a growing majority of people have no insurance. Nothing could be further from the truth. Out of 300-million people in the country, they claim 40-million have no insurance. Out of those 40-million, they believe at least 16-million are not legal citizens. Nearly 20 of the remaining 24-million are on various government programs already. All those numbers are their numbers, not mine. It seems obvious to me that the president and his party simply want to lay claim to passing ANY sort of health care initiative. Do we really need to fix a problem NOW that only 1.6-percent of the population has? We need Congress to stop ignoring the majority of American people and listen. We should DEMAND that each of them go on the government solution they propose. Isn’t that the least they could do to assure us that they have put forward the best solution?

Terry Stewart

Laconia