Ready to fight, and other letters

Re: “House votes to repeal reform law” (ModernHealthcare.com, Jan. 19): I don't usually respond to issues like this, but I am putting my boxing gloves on and letting everyone I know that most of the people who we elect to serve us are serving others. They try to repeal a law that will help 46 million people. There will be another election.

Patricia Montgomery

Nichols, S.C.

Re: “Repeal could leave 129 million without coverage: HHS” (ModernHealthcare.com, Jan. 18): Absolute junk. Worst lies yet from the administration. Almost none of those 129 million people are currently uninsured, they have coverage through work and existing individual policies, and the law is making it harder for companies to continue to offer coverage, not easier.

Michael Bertaut

Healthcare economistBlue Cross and Blue Shield of LouisianaBaton Rouge, La.

The numbers cited in your story are contrived by HHS to get the public to believe Obamacare is a good thing. Why don't you publish the diagram done by the judicial committee that took 4½ months to complete showing Obamacare for what it really is: A very bad bill that will cost Americans more for healthcare in the future.

Len Barend

PresidentThe Barend AgencyLas Vegas

I hope John Boehner reads this story! But he really doesn't care about healthcare delivery as a function of an advanced, progressive and compassionate society. He cares about healthcare delivery as a business.

Ann C. Dickerson

JohnstonWells Public RelationsDenver

Hogwash! This is sensationalism at its worst.

Chuck Craven

Finance departmentGilbert (Ariz.) Hospital

That's bunk! Fear tactics from the utopian crowd. This is an utterly absurd claim. Outrageous!

Ed Dyer

CEOKindred HospitalSan Antonio

I think we should review what makes up this 129 million number. Previously, the 40 million to 50 million mentioned folks that did not have healthcare insurance was a composite of numbers that did include some that should not have been mentioned in that context. The roughly 15 million who could afford healthcare insurance and refused it is one example. The 10 million to 12 million illegal immigrants would be another example.

Now they are saying 129 million would lose coverage. The question is how many of these truly would be allowed insurance if the bill stays and how many may already have insurance that just want to change carriers?

We need to examine the whole picture and quit throwing out numbers without the whole story being told.

Mickey Christensen

TQM SystemsBaton Rouge, La.

How can a group of very rich congressmen/women (with free healthcare) even consider taking healthcare away from 129 million Americans?

How inhumane and un-American!

Kenneth W. Adams

Pharmacy managerSeattle Children's Home Care Services

I fall into one of these categories and I still believe that socialism is not going to help me nor save me from the pitfalls of the insurance world.

The government has no place in our private lives, and as soon as you give up that freedom for their protection, you put yourself at their mercy.

They (the government at large) do not know you or care about you. But they will use you to get what they want. Power and money. They will use your sympathies to get you to play into their power play. They will use you and your innate goodness to get you to agree with them so they can pass or keep a bill that will ultimately destroy our healthcare as we know it. And it will not bring you what you expect.

The Republicans have it right in trying to repeal this law.

Raquel Shumway

Administrative assistantInstaCode InstituteDammeron Valley, Utah

The “we want change, whatever that is” 2010 elections are over. But, we simply returned to unproductive game playing, witness the feckless GOP repeal effort.

Would a different health reform strategy have worked better for the Democrats? Given what happened, an election route of Democrats across the board, it clearly would have been worth a try for both electoral and technical reasons.

In early 2009, with the public obviously ready for real lasting change, Obama and the Democratic majority had the opportunity of a lifetime. What could be done to get us on the right path to have affordable, high quality healthcare for our citizens? 

The solution was (and still is) straightforward: expand Medicare to cover all, even if it is phased in by age cohort. Medicare has overhead expenses of about 3%, which is one-tenth of the administrative, marketing and other overhead costs of private insurers. Under universal Medicare, the savings can be spent reimbursing doctors and other providers for direct care—taking care of sick people—versus buying second homes and yachts for insurance company CEOs who are making millions of dollars each year in bonuses, stock options and ridiculous salaries (which will just increase under the new law).

It is hard for the GOP and others to attack Medicare, a program almost everyone (Republicans, independents and Democrats) understands and supports. But because of the failure of the administration to act in accordance with its own core beliefs, expansion of Medicare is not what occurred. We did end up with reform, simply because of the political cost to the Democrats of inaction. But it is a horse put together by a committee, an ineffective complex political camel that will clearly not control costs, the top healthcare concern of most Americans.

We will all lose in the long term because the core system, based on increasing insurance company profits regardless of the impact on patients, is unchanged and healthcare will continue to consume more and more of our gross domestic product. And Democrats will lose congressional seats again in 2012 because the public does not understand the new healthcare reform law's benefits (which are substantial, by the way, in regard to access) as opposed to a simple expansion of Medicare.

Jack Bernard

CEOMonticello Healthcare SolutionsMonticello, Ga.

Instead of repealing the whole (healthcare reform) bill, why don't the Republicans take out all the wasteful spending they required to be added so they would vote for the bill?

And then they blamed the waste on the Democrats and voted no.

What is the House going to say to all the families who now have insurance on pre-existing conditions?

What is the House going to say to all the families struggling to educate their children who will have their children's healthcare revoked?

What is the House going to say to all the Medicare recipients who have some relief in the “doughnut hole” for medication?

And to the best of my knowledge, small business has some tax relief for business.

The bill is generally wasteful and not really good, but let's get rid of the bad and keep the good.

There is an amendment process.

Nancy Price

Erie, Pa.