Pedro's Podium: The Healthcare Deformation 2

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The President has said that he will sit down with the Republicans to talk about healthcare on Thursday of this week. But before that meeting the leaders of the House and Senate are preparing to pass the "Healthcare Deformation" bill to send to the President by using legislative tricks. The Speaker of the House has said that she is doing this for the American people. I have to ask: Exactly what American people is she referring to? Is it the minority of people who don't have insurance? Is it for those who are happy with their healthcare coverage? Is it for those who consider this a disaster in the making? Is it for the healthcare insurance companies who stand to gain from the mandates? Is it for the states that will be handed a pile of unfunded mandates when they are so far underwater already?

I can only assume that if the bill is passed, that the President will sign it. Even though he has made promises that he will listen to alternatives, I've noticed that he does little of it. What I keep hearing him say is that he has done a poor job of explaining the plan and that he just needs to talk to the American people. Well Mr. President, we are not all children. You need to stop talking at us and start talking to us. Listen to what we is being said. American leaders listen; they don't want to be talk down to the people. Just because you won an election does not make you all knowing and seeing. The system was built from the ground up; we do not want to be ruled. We want to be lead by a leader who is concerned about the whole, not just a single special interest group or a personal agenda.

Mr. President, I ask you to stop all of your divisive talk and demonizing of whole industries and segments of the American population. This is not the way to gain favor or trust. If you are going to demonize the doctors or the health insurance companies today: Then who will be the next target? I can only assume that it will be anyone who doesn't agree with you. That is not the way I want to be governed. I don't want to live in fear. I don't want to have to worry that your next agenda item will need to make my job a fall guy so that you can sell another expansion of government power. Living in fear of the government is not part of the American dream. The concept of divide and conquer is well understood and you should not be using it. Don't demonize the people that you expect to help oppose you. Turning us against one another is not a system that I want to see. After all we are all Americans and to the largest extent many of our values are not that different.

This week we can only hope to see the President sit down with the opposition party and talk honestly about the concerns of the American people. Will this be just more stage show to sell his plan or will he honestly listen and not simply talk down to the Republicans? Of course there will be no reason for the meeting if the Democrats in Congress and the President push forward with this deformation a just another agenda item. The Democrat agenda should be carefully considered for its permanent affect on the country. I distrust any agenda that is pushed by these means.

Let us not also be fooled by this political sideshow. The deformation was stopped by disagreements in the Democrat party. The American people gave them a super majority in 2008. Those members of the President's party are the ones who could have passed it with no input or votes from the other side. The saving grace was that some of these politicians actually listened to the people who put them in the office. We can only hope that some honest debate will occur, but then again the Leaders of Congress have other plans.

Another interesting event that occurred last week was the announcement of the increase in healthcare premiums by several insurance companies. I find this "coincident" very curious. Anyone who has followed the actual final version of this bill understands how the insurance mandate will affect the insurance industry. The insurance industry will be a huge winner with this provision. I am not bashing the entire industry. I'm simply pointing out that a couple of companies that could receive a windfall from the Deformation picked last week to announce large rate increases. Call me paranoid or cynical but it was an interesting development with interesting timing.

As I've said before that I'm not defending the insurance industry as a whole, but I'm not demonizing it either. They are businesses that provide a service and have responsibilities to their customers, employees, and stockholders. They must do what is best for their companies, nothing more nothing less. Unless they make profits they will not be able to provide the service. They must be efficient and do as much as possible with as little as possible. They are regulated and must answer to the government. But they should not become a permanent fixture in American life by means of a mandate from the government.

The current run public healthcare systems, Medicare and Medicaid, are full of fraud and waste. The President has told us that this is true. He promised to clean up the system. Well the private system doesn't have as much of a problem as the public system. Making the public system bigger by destroying the private system can only lead to more abuse, higher costs, less service, and lower quality. It is not hard to compare the two systems. Americans must decide what is best in their situation and decide what they want to do with their lives. This should not be mandated by the government. It is something that we call FREEDOM.

If we allow the government to take away our healthcare choices we will surely see the rest of our freedoms fade away. The governments have spent so much money that it may be too late to save many of our freedoms unless we act. We must hold our elected official responsible for their acts. We must continue to let them know of our displeasure and more of us must speak out to save our liberties.

Are we heading toward the total slavery of debt? Too many of us are already so deep in debt to the banks that we have few options in our lives. We wake up every morning weighted down with the worries of credit cards and multiple mortgages. For some the American dream seems to be a nightmare. Well what happens when the bills that our politicians have run up come due. Well I'm afraid that many of those bills are coming due now and they keep spending more. By spending over a Trillion dollars on this deformation bill we are spending money that we don't have. You cannot spend your way out of debt.

We must make some hard choices. We must work to make the current healthcare system more efficient and more local, not larger. We must be willing to turn down the help from the government and stand on our own feet. We must help those that cannot help themselves, but that does not mean that the government must do it. We must stand up to the minority that would enslave us to fulfill their wants and remember what this country was built upon. We help those who need it and make those who can do what they can. Tough love will make for a better country and future for the future generations.

This is the second post to this series. The original can be found here: http://pedros-podium.blogspot.com/2010/01/healthcare-deformation.html