You went on record today saying you can fund the entire cost of whatever your health care reform plan would be through cost reductions.
Today, the Fox News showed you misrepresented a personal story in your big health care reform speech last week. The gentleman who you said died because his insurer denied his chemo because the didn’t tell them about a gall bladder problem died waiting for the needed chemo. The truth is his insurer did approve his insurance, he received a stem cell transplant, and lived four more years. Your office responded by saying it was close enough to the truth. Also, you said private health care insurance costs more than company provided insurance. Again, according to the Wall Street Journal, it’s not true. Since you seem to feel, the truth is like horseshoes and hand grenades, close enough, we don’t believe you can produce the savings. Whether it’s $800 billion or $1.2 billion, you have no record of cutting costs, only increasing them. And, the government in general can’t perform in this area.
So, let’s do this, Mr. President. You cut the $800 billion and you can have your health care reform. You increase the number of doctors and nurses, you can have your health care reform. You test tort reform and show it works, you can have it. But, not on a promise from you on any of these.
Here’s a comment from on my blog from a reader in Massachusetts. This is the truth. This is what happened with their health care reform. Similar to the one you are trying to sell us.
“I’m a resident of the state leading the nation to health care reform, Massachusetts. Not only did we not have a plan for how to pay for the cost of all the newly insured who wanted to get their money’s worth, we too made no allowances for what would happen with a fixed supply and a sudden increase in demand. After two years of the grand experiment, roughly 40% of primary care physicians in the state are not accepting any new patients. The average wait to see a primary care physician is about 45 days. Personal anecdote, I wanted to have a lump on my arm looked at last fall. After waiting for a PCP appointment and taking a course of drugs that did no good, I called to make an appointment with a dermatologist recommended by my PCP. Earliest appointment I could get was 9 weeks, 9 days before Christmas. At appointment, I was told it should be removed, would require stitches, and was an office procedure … but it was so close to the doctor’s holiday travel plans that the stitches removal would be while he was away and instead i would get the “earliest appointment after the first of the year to get it done. That was March 3, 10 weeks later. Good thing it was benign. At that appointment, when making the followup appointment for stitches removal the fact that my wife was a nurse caused the option of having her remove the stitches at home to be presented, which I ultimately did, and apparently could have saved myself 10 weeks of waiting. Seems to me the supply/demand arguments here are coming true at least in my state.”
Doug Gordon
This is just what we fear you want to do to all of us. We don’t want it, any part of it.
Create a track record. Only then will we buy your baloney.
