Letter to our National Leaders on Health Care - From Main Street

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Dear President Obama and Speaker Pelosi:

With all the Democrats and media caught up in a feeding frenzy over the passage of health care reform in America I thought I would give you a little advice from the people you serve.

First, when the media becomes the cheerleader for social reform it is a sad state of affairs in America as the media were supposed to be the objective reporters of news, not the initiators of news. Somewhere along the way our media stopped reporting news and started trying to make news.

Perhaps that explains why only about 50% of the eligible voters in America don't even register to vote. Or maybe that is why network news rating have collapsed and cable news rating get far more attention than they deserve.



You don't get it but America does. When only a few million people watch cable, and just 20 million watch all network news, that means about 285 million Americans do not trust the news and don't watch it. Newspapers of course are collapsing in readership at a faster rate than television.

My advice is to take the adoration of the news media with a grain of salt. Why even the Obama love fest on The View on network television only pulls an audience of about 350,000 viewers out of 315 million. So don't assume what you see or read in the media has much credibility.

Now, as for health care, why did it take the Democrats 13 months of painful deliberations to the exclusion of the economy, unemployment and everything else to figure out you had the votes to slam through the bills? In the end the bitter partisanship that has resulted from this protracted debate has driven a stake through the heart of America being a nation of people and not political parties.



You seem to forget the majority of Americans can't identify with either political party and the independent movement gets stronger by the day. The Tea Party movement is but one of many that will be heard from in the next few years.

As for the health care bill, good old salty VP Joe Biden was right, it was a F###ing big deal. But it isn't even done until the changes are made in the Senate. If it gets done there are still some serious questions for us Americans. As I read it, and finding the truth in the claims of both political parties and the news media is a serious struggle, I believe it is the first time in our history that Americans are being forced by Congress to buy something we may not want from private companies we may not like regardless of the cost. If we don't we get fined.

Where in our Constitution does it say the federal government can do that? Does that mean you can force us to join a union whether we want to or not? Or force us to participate in public education when private, Parochial and charter schools are much better for our kids?



The Governor of Pennsylvania was on TV assuring us that the federal government has the right to force us to do this and has done it before. He gave as examples Passports and Immigration. Nonsense. We don't have to buy a Passport or get fined. And the 15 million illegal immigrants prove the government doesn't force people to get immigration papers. Where is the truth?

I heard the US Attorney from South Florida talking about Medicaid fraud. You claim this bill will save hundreds of billions of dollars in fraud. Why does this fraud still exist if you know it is there? The US Attorney says in South Florida there are $2 billion worth of fraud cases backed up waiting for criminal investigation and prosecution. He said he has 270 employees and that if he had three shifts of 270 employees working 24 hours a day seven days a week he still couldn't process the cases that are already pending. How in the world is the Justice department going to handle a caseload going after billions and billions of more in fraud? Why not increase the punishment for ripping of the government to huge fines, mandatory prison sentences and stripping guilty parties of any licenses forever?



If so much fraud exists and you all know it, then maybe you are guilty of mismanagement of billions of federal dollars and a failure to perform your fiduciary responsibilities. It would have been a bigger travesty of justice had you not passed some kind of health care reform.

You promised coverage for 32 million uninsured Americans yet they are not covered until 2014. Did you forget to tell us that? How are the states going to be able to increase taxes by hundreds of billions of dollars in 2018 to pay for Medicaid cost increases? I guess if a state has to increase state taxes by billions it does not count as a tax increase yet your action imposed that burden on the states.



Much of what was promised to us will not take effect until 2014. We wonder what you promised others to get the votes that takes effect immediately? How many pork barrel projects, special funding, or other forms of political corruption are buried in the negotiations to get this approved?

We did need health care reform. We are watching to see what we really got. And if health care reform means we have given up the last of our individual freedom and can now be forced by the federal government to buy what we may not want or be fined by our own government then you may have a much bigger fight on your hands getting this thing implemented than you think.



Finally, every small businessman I have talked with insist their health care costs are going up, not down, because of this bill. They fully expect insurance companies to adjust premiums upward to pay for all the benefits in the bill. They do not expect any government subsidies or tax credits to cover the increased costs and they dread the paperwork involved. We will be watching your actions.

Health care reform was needed. Let us hope your solution will help. Let us also hope that the flaws in the bill will not just result in another industry in the private sector becoming a slave to the federal government. Let us hope that single payer and public option elements that were originally demanded by you then defeated do not suddenly appear in the laws of the land.

Be very careful how you implement this bill. Be very cautious with the truth. So many lies and distortions have already been shouted we do not need any further reason to question the credibility of our government.

Sincerely,
Main Street America

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