Sunday, December 20, 2009

Dear Senators Snowe and Collins:

I have a simple question. How can you call this legislation "health care reform", when it addresses not a single issue regarding why health care is so expensive? Regardless of how many government middlemen you insert in the process (those paragons of fiscal efficiency), and how many different hands you shift the money between, it's still going to cost thousands per day to stay in a hospital, an MRI is still going to cost $8000, drugs are still going to cost much more here than they do in Canada and elsewhere, and malpractice insurance is still going to be expensive enough to make doctors think twice about continuing in practice. So where is the reform? And where is tort reform?

Using insurance to pay for medical care was a bad idea when it was invented, and still is. The principle behind insurance is to spread a small risk among many insured. One of the first insurance policies in this country was written by a group of farmers who got together to insure each other's barns against fire, on the premise that maybe one or two barns might burn, but not so many that the rest couldn't pay for it. But when it comes to health care, EVERYONE'S barn burns down eventually. Everyone has a 100% of eventually needing more medical care than a lifetime of premiums can pay for. The only choice health insurance companies have to stay in business is to get rid of high risk people. It has always been that way, and will always be that way, until medical costs are low enough that a person's premiums have some chance of covering the costs. It is simple mathematics.

Therefore, as my representatives in the Senate, I direct you to vote against this legislation. Thank you for your time.

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