Reform the Reform

The recently passed health care “reform”  needs to be reformed as quickly as possible.  There are obvious problems with the legislation. Most obvious is that it does NOTHING to address the cause of our system’s problems, which is the high cost of health care.

In fact, health care costs will now rise for most Americans as a result of the immediate additional taxes being places on insurance companies and small businesses (and of course the taxation begins immediately but the benefits don’t begin until 2014 or later – clever, huh?). Real reform would allow individuals to be free to purchase healthcare services and insurance from any healthcare provider or insurance carrier they wished. 

As enormous as the problems created by this legislation will be, what concerns me most about this so-called reform is that it is doomed (designed?) to fail, and the result of that failure will be a renewed effort for single-payer health care.  This entire debacle is a giant leap toward the U.S. becoming a European-styled welfare state. 

Ironically at a time when Europe is finally starting to admit that it must move away from its 20^th century socialistic economy, our leaders are pushing us down the slope toward socialism by reaching further than ever into manufacturing, our financial system, education, and health care. Our country faces huge challenges in each of those areas. 

Just because a problem is large and difficult to correct doesn't mean we shouldn't try to find common ground.  Real reform can only be done with the consent of the governed and shouldn't be rushed with arbitrary deadlines, accounting shenanigans and laden with back-room political deals.     
 
Please join us in the effort to reform the health care reform - scraping this mistake and enacting something actually addresses the real problems at hand.