President Obama wrote a NY Times OpEd piece for the NY Times titled “Why We Need Health Care Reform”. Below is The Conservative Nation’s answer to the president’s article.

President Obama, in the opening comments of your article, you state that the media’s attention is focused on the loudest voices and not on the millions of people who do not have health insurance. I believe that if you would take a closer look at the people voicing their concerns with, and objections to your healthcare reform plan, you would see that they are representative of the hundreds of millions of productive people in our society who believe that their current healthcare is, at a minimum, adequate, and that they will be the ones forced to bear the burden of paying for those who are not productive. Providing health insurance for those who do not have it is a laudable goal, but in our current economic situation it is a goal that we simply can’t afford.
In your article, you used examples of unfortunate people who can’t get traditional health insurance. However, those people are not living under normal circumstances. Perhaps if your healthcare reform plan focused on ways to provide healthcare for these unfortunate people, rather than trying to force our entire population into a “one size fits all” plan, you would find it more acceptable to the general American population.

You go on to mention the four main ways the reform you’re proposing will provide more stability and security to every American. Have you considered that a better, simpler, and more affordable way to achieve these goals would be to limit liabilities in catastrophic situations? The actuaries who work for the government could easily come up with a cost figure to define a catastrophic situation, but perhaps $100,000 would work for beginning the conversation.

Another measure to consider in reducing the costs of healthcare is to limit punitive damages awarded in malpractice cases. If malpractice insurance premiums were reduced, doctors would be able to charge less. If healthcare providers weren’t so concerned with the potential to be sued for hundreds of thousands of dollars or even millions of dollars, they would not be so apt to send their patients for diagnostic procedures that aren’t really needed. Tort reform would go a long way towards achieving your goal of reducing medical costs.

You continue, talking about the future that you do not want for your children and ours. I do not want to pass on trillions of dollars in government debt to my little grandson. In my opinion, the debts we are leaving our children, due to our inability to pay our own way, is a much greater threat to their future than the lack of your healthcare reform will ever be.

Mr. President, you say that in the end, healthcare reform isn’t about politics, but rather about people’s lives and livelihoods. I, for one, wish that that I could believe you, but I can’t. I see your efforts to implement what you call healthcare reform as an effort to socialize yet another part of America. Due to your party’s efforts to ram you plan down our throat, with many committing to vote for a plan that is not even finalized, without even taking the time to read the bill, it appears to me as being more about command and control than about providing healthcare for those who can’t get it. I do agree with you that it is about people’s lives and livelihoods, but think that your plan will cost many their livelihood and make all of our lives worse in the long run.

I have previously written that our healthcare system is not perfect, and that there is room for improvement. However, our healthcare system does not need the complete overhaul that you are advocating. It seems to me that you have taken an “it’s my way or the highway” stance on improving the American healthcare system. Instead of leaving it up to Congress, why don’t you encourage some “out of the box” thinking from the American public and engage our nation’s state governors. The plan to improve our healthcare system that results from engaging these two groups would restore us to a level of excellence not experienced by any other nation in the history of the world.

Since I’ve mentioned states, let me leave you with one parting thought. The state of California is on the verge of bankruptcy. One of the leading causes is the massive expense of the state’s social programs. Many years ago, one of my mentors told me to always watch California for “the next big thing”, because California was usually one to three years ahead of the rest of the country. If California is facing a possible bankruptcy, how long will it be before it happens to America?

If your plan for healthcare reform is so good, will you and Congress commit to participating in it instead or reserving the privilege of keeping your current plans?

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