J's Cafe Nette

On Wednesday, as I understand it, any viewer of ABC network shows will be hearing a lot about national health care, with the climax coming at prime time with a show from the White House discussing Obama’s plans for health care and how to cover those not covered by insurance now. No dissenting advertisements or questions will be allowed.

I was going to provide lots of links to show you different comments in newspapers about the debate that is now going on in Congress, but I know our readers are savvy enough to have informed themselves on this important issue, so I decided to leave my notes and links out and speak from my heart.

The Obama administration and the democrat Congress has been on a spending binge unlike anything this country has ever seen before. We have all seen reports that Obama has pushed for bills and signed legislation that has already spent more money in his few months in office than the GW Bush entire presidency. Spending was out of control during the Bush presidency also and Congress wasn’t very responsible with your money.

Now we read that the uncompleted bill written by Sen. Edward Kennedy, and being shepherded through the Senate by Chris Dodd, is going to cost 1 trillion dollars (with a “t” ) and will only cover about 1/3 of the estimated 48 million Americans without insurance. Do the math and you will see it will cost at least 3 trillion dollars to cover everyone.

The way the bill is being written, it will force private insurance companies out of business and everyone will have to have the government plan. We would have our health care at the mercy of those who have given us the Post Office and Amtrak.
I don’t feel warm and fuzzy about those prospects. All it will do is create a larger bureaucracy and not filter down to the people who need it.

I sometimes read a blog from France that has many socialists on it. They all think having nationalized health care is the best thing since sliced bread, yet they all talk of the fact none of them can get a job that pays more than minimum wage. I don’t know if this is typical of France, but listening to them, it seems to be so.

They still pay for care, but at a reduced rate.

Two weeks ago I went back to my home state of Maine and saw first hand a mini version of nationalized health care.

As some of you know I am 1/2 Indian and I was back at the reservation tending to some family issues.

While it is true one family member was able to get a dental appointment because she was only there for a short time and another patient was called to see if he or she would re-schedule so this person could get care, I find this kind of thing to be the exception and not the rule.

I have a family member who has injured her back and uses Indian Health Services (IHS) for her medical care. She was told she needed an MRI but first she had to take a muscle relaxant and vicodin. Since she doesn’t take drugs she had the prescriptions filled so she could get to the next step, but has refused to use the meds.

She can’t get the MRI she needs to diagnose her problem because there is no money in the budget available for the procedure. Funding is based on head count and care is rationed to very few.

Another person I know had a full knee replacement, but had to wait for five years before they approved him for needed surgery, instead giving him drugs to control pain.

Another had a car run into her in her yard and needs back surgery. After three years and a favor done to the clinic she was approved to have her surgery.

I could go on and on but I think you get the picture. This is just a microscopic look at what it would be nationwide. Programs will be poorly administered and unless you know someone who knows someone you will wait for needed procedures as simple as an MRI to diagnose your condition.

While it is admirable to want to provide health care to all who do not have it, it is a mistake to try to do it under the umbrella of the United States government.

Everything in this administration has been an emergency from the TARP bill, to the stimulus that isn’t working, to buying car companies and bailing out banks that this time I hope the little boy has cried wolf one time too many.

Polls are showing Obama’s approval ratings are down and it is because of the huge spending spree we can’t afford and the fact the economy is not performing as advertised.

After five months in office it seems the American public is getting tired of hearing Bush blamed for everything and holding Obama responsible for the worsening economy. Had he left it alone and let business do its job we wouldn’t still be as deeply in recession as we are now. He has already said publicly we are broke. We are out of money.

I don’t know about Obama, but if I run out of money I quit spending. Most people run their homes like that. He has bitten off more than he can chew and now it seems to be choking him.

Even Democrats cannot agree on a plan for health care, with Dodd saying he doesn’t care about bipartisianship but only getting a bill passed and Baucus saying we cannot afford what has been proposed.

It is still a fact that if someone in the United States is sick and doesn’t have insurance the hospitals will treat them and pass the cost on to those who are insured by way of higher insurance premiums. No one is denied life-saving care and I have seen many immigrants in our local emergency room there because they have a bad cold or whatever would normally be done in a doctor’s office. They are treated.

Immunization shots are given by any county health department in the country, so preventive medicine is taken care of for those who cannot afford it.

We’ve heard how socialized medicine works in Canada and the US, with Canadians able to pay coming to the United States to get their brain tumors treated or their heart conditions fixed because by the time they could see a doctor in Canada they would have been way past the time that any medical help would do any good.

People in UK can’t even get life-saving prescriptions. Is that what we want? Do we want our older people who are still able to function and contribute to society to be denied health care because they are near the end of their lives and the money could better be spent on José who isn’t even a citizen of this country?

I’ve seen this debacle first-hand and I know what a mess it would be if this is passed in any form. This is why I oppose nationalized health care. We need to let our congressmen and senators know where we stand, not that my congressman will listen as he is Pelosi’s man on finance and walks in lock-step to anything she wants. I do have republican senators who are more than willing to listen and more than likely will vote against this upcoming boondoggle.

Watch out for the pitch. They want to get it under a trillion dollars so it sounds more appealing. Kind of like the pitchmen on TV who advertise you can get a wonderful product for just $19.99. It’s the psychological barrier of mentioning a trillion dollars so they want to trim a few million or billion to make it more palatable. Nine hundred ninety-nine billion, nine hundred ninety-nine million, nine hundred ninety-nine thousand and ninety-nine cents is not enough to make it acceptable to me.

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