One more letter to President Obama- for all the fucking good it does

Dear President Obama,

I can’t express how disappointed I am at what, after a ridiculous uni-partisan process, might come to pass as health-care reform.  It might be “bash insurance companies reform”; but it most certainly is not healthcare reform.

What your leaderless prodding of the congress has accomplished amounts to growing an already broken system in the same broken direction.  This will not help alleviate our problems; it will only exacerbate them.  You people have reformed nothing.  All you’ve done is squeeze one part of the system.  You eek out coverage for a few more people without curtailing any of the costs of healthcare, which was part of your initial promise.  This plan will increase costs in one form or another; and regardless of the nice rosy numbers the House put forth to try and bamboozle us into thinking that this is a good plan, your so-called reform will only serve to grow our already astronomically large federal deficit. 

Medicare is going and will go broke; and because of your lack of true leadership on this matter, you have allowed an uncreative thieving congress to come up with an even bigger Medicare-type system as a solution.  In what universe does this make fiscal sense to you?!  Oh yeah, in a universe where lawmakers do not have to live by the same rules and with the same system of care as those of us for whom they make laws.

The problem with the system starts with having employer mandated healthcare.  Once you start with that, all kinds of obscure deal making between employers and insurance companies, insurance companies and medical offices, medical offices and hospital systems, hospital systems and insurance companies get done that make it impossible for consumers to rationally price any procedure or service in order to chose wisely and cost effectively.  Adding another obscure player, such as a government option, only makes the whole system more obscure and more costly.  This is in no way a competitive solution for an already uncompetitive system.  And oh, let’s not forget the drug companies who make deals with whole countries.  Countries for whom we subsidize drugs because, on the surface, we pay lip service to “the free market”, but what we really do is allow drug companies to lobby our lawmakers to keep this incredibly inequitable system just like it is. The system is the problem, and not necessarily the players.  Your so-called reform just squeezes one player; it shifts costs and fixes absolutely nothing.

A friend of mine used to say that when it came to voting, you just had to hold your nose and vote Republican; though that only worked when the Republicans actually demonstrate fiscal restraint. But 8 years of Bush, 4 of which were with a Republican congress, have taught us that, these days, people in office care only about redistributing taxpayer money into the hands of anybody who will help them stay in power.  And my Dear President, very rarely does this coincide with the good of the country.  These days, going anywhere near a voting booth requires that I hold my nose regardless of what “lever” I pull with my other hand.

Seriously disappointed, and typing with one hand only,

Katya Cohen

addendum: from the Ranting Economist: this from someone in the know...  yep, still bending over