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Letter to the Editor: Government should stay away from health reform

Guy Mohun
Truckee

Thank goodness that our representative Tom McClintock voted against the nationalization of our health care system. Mr. Antonucci exaggerated when he called this a and#8220;bi-partisianand#8221; effort (and#8220;McClintock votes against health care bill,and#8221; Nov. 13). The Democratically controlled house narrowly passed this bill 220-215. 39 Democrats and 176 Republicans voted against it. One lone Republican voted for it. Under this bill the government will sell insurance, competing with companies that must make a profit to survive.

No privately owned insurance company will be able to compete against a government-backed insurance institution for long. We will soon find ourselves with only the government choice. With a single-payer system, the one who pays the bills makes the rules. We will have no choice, the single payer will dictate who gets what treatment and when.

The proposed bill comes with a price tag of $1.2 trillion. If I paid you $1 million a day for a year you would have $365 million. If I did this for 10 years, I would have given you $3.65 billion dollars. If this continued for another 10 years, we would not be half way to $1 trillion. Medicare is a great example of a government run, single-payer system. Most people on it like it; very little out of pocket expenses, etc. … the problem is that it is broke. Medicare pays 80 cents per dollar billed, Medi-Cal pays less. Private insurance pays more and hence our premiums continue to rise.



Putting more government into our health care system is not the answer. We need real reform. We need real payment for real costs and not deflated payments for inflated costs. We need tort reform, competition, elimination of emergency room visits for doctor visits and elimination of pre-existing clauses.


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