Here are just a few of those creations: a Health Choices
Administration (a new independent agency in the executive branch of the
government, headed by a health choices commissioner), a Health Benefits
Advisory Committee, a Health Insurance Exchange Trust Fund, a special
inspector general for the Health Insurance Exchange, a Center for
Comparative Effectiveness Research, a Public Health Workforce Corps, a Task
Force on Clinical Preventive Services and a school-based Health Clinic
Program.
While the plan has been titled "Affordable," and marketed as
budget-neutral, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), noted in its July 17
letter to the House Ways and Means Committee that its estimated cost is more
than $1,000,000,000,000 (that's 1 trillion dollars, or a million, million
dollars) over 10 years (2010-2019). According to the CBO, this cost would be
offset by savings in Medicare and by increasing "federal revenues by about
$583 billion." There is only one way to increase federal revenues -- to
increase taxes, which takes money out of your pocket and puts it in the
government's coffers.
Instead of focusing on universal access to health care, this
bill throws out a large trawl net that sweeps across an enormous area far
beyond health-care access to include personal decisions and social
structure.
For example, included in H.R. 3200: "The entity shall provide
for culturally and linguistically appropriate communication and health
services." It refers to ''shared decision making ... a collaborative process
between patient and clinician that engages the patient in decision making,
provides patients with information about trade-offs among treatment options,
and facilitates the incorporation of patient preferences and values into the
medical plan."
It notes nurse home-visitation services will be based upon
evidence, that such services are effective in areas including, "increasing
birth intervals between pregnancies. ... Increasing economic
self-sufficiency, employment advancement, school-readiness, and educational
achievement, or reducing dependence on public assistance.''
These excerpts show that the result will not simply be universal
access, but universal intrusion by government.
I hope our representatives will understand, when they get back
to Washington after their summer break, that we believe in health-care
"reform," but the current proposal is a bunch of rot.
Right now, President Obama might be happy to share a Coke and a
smile with supporters of his plan, but the number of people who fit this
description is dwindling faster than ice melts in a glass on a hot Georgia
day, and we still have more than half of August left.