Crossroads for health insurance 'reform'

Blues legend Robert Johnson was said to acquire his guitar mastery from the devil one dark night "down on the crossroad."

The president's "reform" of health insurance is stalled in Congress with members returning to their districts in August to face their constituents. They (and we) are at the crossroad. We must choose.

Will We the People demand Congress pass Obama's "reform" (which the president and Congress are exempted from) with its promise of more and better health care to more people at a lower cost ?

Or will We the People, steeped in skepticism that government can deliver on these lofty promises, demand that Congress slow down and debate the practical reforms that can yield a better health care system.

I know which road I want Congress to take. The government of $600 toilet seats, the Katrina mess, and now "Cars for Clunkers" making promises to lower the costs of a health care system already made more expensive by the existing labyrinth of government regulation is laughable and tragic.

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By "practical reforms," I mean Congress must act to return the power of choice to the patient. Health insurance should be as portable as car or death insurance, its premiums tax deductible to the owner (whether employer or employee), sold competitively on a national basis, with coverage fine tuned by the insured, not the government.

I mean that Congress must restore the doctor-patient relationship it has weakened. Lawyer windfall cases must be curbed by allowing actual damages in malpractice cases but limiting the expensive too often phony "pain and suffering" claims as even California has done.

I mean that Congress must allow Medicare doctors to lower costs by treating the elderly in home visits, rather than expensive hospital stays punctuated with frightening, too often superfluous tests (again too often ordered by doctors to ward off liability lawsuits).

I mean that uninsured Americans should be treated at community clinics instead of the ER. Congress forced hospitals to take the uninsured (including illegal aliens) for treatment in the emergency room, clogging these facilities with a tsunami on non-emergency patients. Hospitals are closing all over the country as a result, lowering the availability and quality of emergency care in too many American communities.

Illegals should not be eligible for taxpayer-subsidized insurance.

At the very least, I mean that the federal government should "reform" the government health care plans it already runs (Medicare, Medicaid and Veterans Administration, where costs are rising faster than private health care) before federalizing the rest of health care

Obama's "reform" (the House version is 1,018 pages long, numbered H.R. 3200) accomplishes the opposite of each of these points. Here's a sample.

A government health care insurance exchange will define the terms of your coverage (Page 72, Section 201, lines 8-14 and pg. 84, Sec. 203).

The government has authority to disqualify Medicare Advantage Plans (Part B), HMOs, etc to force people into the government insurance plan (Page 341, Sec. 1162, lines 3-9).

Pages 425 to 430 put government in charge of end of life procedures.

Government insurance will cover all non-U.S. citizens (Page 50-51, Sec. 152).

All individuals shall have health insurance or pay a tax (Page 167, Sec. 401.59B, lines 18-23).

Elsewhere, the "reform" mandates the government setting doctor's pay, controlling medical education and limiting what doctors can own; sets up a "health choices commissioner" to choose benefits for you, and requires taxpayer subsidy of health insurance premiums for everyone under 400 percent of the federal poverty level ($88,000/year for a family of four). The contents of health insurance "coverage" will include taxpayer subsidized abortion and future "covered" items will be determined by politics. Transgender operation, anyone?

I have posted H.R. 3200 at my website and an analysis of it by the lawyers at Liberty Counsel. Read and weep.

Only you can hold your Congress member accountable for this outrage masquerading as "reform." Only you can send your representative back to Washington in September with the clear instruction to take the road to reform existing government run health care first before meddling in the private health plans that most Americans have and are happy with.

The devil waited at the crossroads for Robert Johnson's soul. Obama waits at this crossroads to take your health care.