The United States Senate has voted to move the health care bill to the Senate floor to begin debate before the actual vote. This follows the House of Representatives which adopted their view of health care reform by the narrowest of margins, 210-205, after having just hours to read and absorb a 2,000-page bill, and the vote took place on Saturday night. So much for President Obama’s campaign promises of “transparency in government.” Both these actions follow a summer of discussion, town hall meetings, and a flurry of e-mails and other messages between U.S. Senators and Congressmen and their constituents. A great share of the reports I have seen and/or read, together with many national polls, have indicated that a majority of Americans do not favor the health care plans now under consideration.

The bill passed by the House of Representatives did remove abortion coverage in the “public option.” After some discussion on the House floor, an amendment was introduced and passed to adopt this move. Speculation has it that Congressional leaders succumbed to this move, believing that it can be eliminated, either in the Senate bill, or in conference when or if the Senate bill is passed. The House leadership needed the votes of a number of pro-life Democrats in order to move the legislation forward. Even with this sop to those pro-lifers, 39 Democrat congressmen voted against the bill. It is sort of scary to note that this bill which will affect 1/6 of the U.S. economy, was adopted by such a slim majority.

Many of the facets of these health care reform bills worry me. The abortion issue is one. The public option is another, since when the government operates a health insurance plan, it has no care if it loses money, since the government simply raises taxes or borrows money to take care of it. How can free market insurance plans compete with this? Therefore, how long might we expect there to be free market insurance plans available to us competing with such a situation?

The plans in question have established cost estimates in the neighborhood of $1 trillion. We know full well how well government estimates the costs of programs. One example is Social Security, which exceeds the original cost estimates by many times, and is on track to become bankrupt in a few years, unless some drastic action is taken to reduce benefits, or increase retirement age, or both. Medicare is another example, which we are now given to understand will also be bankrupt in a few years, unless benefits and qualifications change substantially. We know that Social Security will not recognize a cost-of-living increase in benefits for the coming year. As I understand it, there will be a one time “gift” to seniors to partially offset this situation.

One more example to consider is the U.S.Postal Service. Some years ago, it was shed from being under the wing of the federal government, since it wasn’t doing so well. So it is now not government run, but is subsidized significantly by the taxpayer. All of these facts are doubly worrisome since we learned the operating deficit for the past fiscal year exceeded $1 trillion ... the largest in the history of the nation.

Here is another worrisome feature about the “public option,” which will be run by the federal government. What could go wrong? Let’s start with government-run Medicare, which according to an article in November issue of AARP magazine, is bursting with billions of dollars of fraud annually. Apparently medicare fraud is so low risk and lucrative that cocaine dealers in Florida and California have switched to Medicare fraud instead.

Another example of a government-run operation is Recovery.com. It has the responsibility of tracking stimulus dollars and how they create jobs. Recovery.com has reported thousands of jobs created in various locales, which upon examination turned out to be very wrong. The result: stimulus programs probably provided very few additional jobs. In fact, the job market has deteriorated to over 10% unemployment currently. We would hope that the reports by Recovery.com were simply errors. But how come is it that all the errors found OVERSTATED job creation? A simple occurrence of errors would have likely found some overstatements as well as understatements. More likely, Recovery.com was created to rationalize the stimulus packages, also at taxpayers’ expense, of course. This is the same government which touts the “public option” of the health care bills as a cure for keeping the free market insurance companies honest, and provide competition for them. Does that make you feel better about our entry into government-run health care?

One of the facets of the health care legislation, is to cover some of the costs there will be $500 billion reduction in Medicare. Probably a reduction in the rate of payment for services to doctors and medical institutions. I could see this as adding to the cost of premiums and services to all other patients to help the institutions to overcome that shortage. Further, it may cause doctors to refuse to see Medicare patients since they know that reimbursement will be inadequate for them to continue their practices. Or it may cause doctors to leave the profession. This at a time when 30 million new patients with insurance coverage will demand to be seen and treated. That is a recipe for rationing health care.

Congressional Republicans have sponsored several amendments to the Health Care reform bills in committee. To bear consideration: Allow health insurance companies to sell their products over state lines to increase competition. Cost saving? Probably. Or how about tort reform? How can attorneys add to our health care situation? Only negatively. If lines were drawn on the process of litigation over procedures and outcomes to make them more sensible, there would obviously be a savings since doctors and medical institutions pay significant premiums for liability insurance to protect themselves from lawsuits. It also causes doctors to over-prescribe in many cases so they can never be accused of not prescribing enough care or treatment for their patients so to reduce the chance of lawsuits being filed against them. One way for tort reform is to mandate that litigants must stand the cost of the litigation if it is found to be frivolous, or if the litigant is unsuccessful in the lawsuit. Attorneys would no longer be able to advertise “If we don’t win, you don’t need to pay me.”

I fear that many lawsuits are brought by the litigant because he has "nothing to lose", so why not sue?

Our congressman, Ron Kind, has already voted for the House health care reform package. Both Senator Feingold and Kohl will probably vote for it in the Senate in the coming weeks. If you feel as I do, that this bill is an overreaction to the things that are wrong with the current health care system, then I suggest you call these Senators (Feingold at 202-224-5323 and Kohl at 202-224-5653) or e-mail them (Feingold is at RussellFeingold@feingold.senate.gov and Kohl is at SenatorKohl@kohl.senate.gov) to input your feelings and recommendations. It is time to put the 2,000-page bills to bed and start over again, with simple fixes for the few things that are needed for improvement of our current health care system.

I leave you with a quote from Thomas Jefferson, “I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labours of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”

Stan Zdrojowy is a resident of Tomah.