I think it is.

War & Peace has about 1,200 pages.  The government healthcare plan is 1,017 pages.  It is passing through Congress with record speed and you just have to wonder, have any of them actually read it?

If you’d like to take a crack at it, you can find the entire text here.

Considering their busy schedules and all the bills they have to write and draft and vote on and all the other events and tasks Congress is responsible for, do they really have the time to sit down and read a bill the size of War & Peace.  I doubt it.

It’s also oddly difficult to find details on the health care reform bill.  I imagine people are still busy reading it.  I was however able to find the following key points (Adams, 2009), this is a truly scary bill…it must absolutely go away…

Remember that all costs associated with this bill including the administrative costs of our very inefficient government running the program as well as the payments to doctors and hospitals themselves are all paid for by YOU whether you want to pay for someone else’s medical coverage or not.  It is a re-distribution of wealth from those who have to those who want to have more.  The have-not’s are a small part of the problem.

• Page 16: States that if you have insurance at the time of the bill becoming law and change, you will be required to take a similar plan. If that is not available, you will be required to take the government option!
• Page 29: Admission: your health care will be rationed!
• Page 30: A government committee will decide what treatments and benefits you get (and, unlike an insurer, there will be no appeals process)
• Page 42: The “Health Choices Commissioner” will decide health benefits for you. You will have no choice. None.
• Page 50: All non-US citizens, illegal or not, will be provided with free healthcare services.  Whatever your personal views of illegal Mexican immigrants, you just need to understand that they will all be covered under this plan.
• Page 58: Every person will be issued a National ID Healthcard.  This card will track all of your private medical information and the government will have access to it.
• Page 59: The federal government will have direct, real-time access to all individual bank accounts for electronic funds transfer.
• Page 65: Taxpayers will subsidize all union retiree and community organizer health plans (example: SEIU, UAW and ACORN) so all union employees who retire, with those incredibly generous retirement plans not seen in the private sector, will be funded by private sector employees (you and me) by taxing us for it.
• Page 95: The Government will pay ACORN and Americorps to sign up individuals for Government-run Health Care plan.
• Page 145: An employer MUST auto-enroll employees into the government-run public plan. No alternatives.  We lose the freedom of choice.  We must be part of the government plan, no exceptions.

Italics are mine.

I also just learned that $1.6B will be set aside in this bill to build bike paths and farmer’s markets.

Meanwhile, the townhall meetings about the bill have been a rare proud American moment in my opinion…for a good video of one, click here.

Let’s not forget the flowchart on how this healthcare plan will operate:

How your healthcare will be managed...

I’ll continue to add to this post as I learn more information.

Meanwhile, feel free to click on any of these links and help fight the government takeover and socialization of healthcare…

http://www.the912project.com/

http://www.trustcommonsense.com/

I’m not saying healthcare doesn’t need to be rethought, but this is not the answer.  Even in business, it is very rare to rip out an entire process, roots and all, and plug in something completely different and new, untried with no idea what the results will be.  The most cost effective and least risky way to change any process is to fully understand the current one, and replace the sections of the pipeline that are inefficient.

If the government did that, they would find that many of the restrictions they have placed on insurance companies are parts of the pipeline that would need to be removed.  For example, it is not efficient for government to mandate that insurance companies cover office visits.  Government has saddled heath insurance with so many mandatory coverage obligations that they can no longer price their product based on risk, which is what insurance is for.

When you insure your car, the insurance company looks at how well you drive, how old you are, where you live and runs that data through a statistical analysis.  People my age, that drive like me in my town will have an accident “x” amount of times per year.  Based on that, an insurance company can accurately price my coverage.  Now if the government also forces insurance companies to cover oil changes (to prevent dangerous roadside breakdowns), repairs, tire inflation (to ensure safe highway driving), windshield washer fluid (to ensure safety through visibility), replacement headlights (safety), etc…, now how much does that cost?  Nobody knows.

Different people will abuse these mandatory coverages in different ways.  Some will get an oil change every week, some annually.  How much does a brake repair cost, since each car is different?  Should an insurance company charge different premiums because brake pads for a Porsche cost more than for a Honda?  What about the different qualities of brake pads…does insurance only cover the lowest quality and if so, is there an option to pay for the higher quality if I’m willing to pay the difference in cash?  Can you see how complicated this would get?  And with complication comes forms, processes, red tape, delays, departments of people to handle it all…and with all of that come costs.

That is why car insurance would rise uncontrollably due to a “feel-good” mandate from government.  Health insurance suffers from the same problem.  It sounds great to a politician to speak to the public extolling the benefits of making health insurance companies cover your routine office visits…and it sounds just as good to force car insurance companies to pay for oil changes.  Who doesn’t hate insurance companies?  So people let these politicans mandate these laws and the politician gets votes.  Yet one of these insurance plans is affordable, and the other is not, and the reason has a lot to do with our own government.

WORK CITED

Adams, K. (What’s Really in Obama’s Healthcare Reform Bill) Retrieved August 12, 2009 from the internet (www.naturalnews.com/026733_health_health_care_healthcare.html)

Categories: Healthcare Reform

Tags: death panel, government healthcare, healthcare, Healthcare Reform