You left off Oregon's disastrous health care plan which has providers fleeing the state.

What makes you think Democrats consider these failures as something wrong? The evidence of their failed policies are strewn across the decades and every failure is either completly ignored or misrepresented. And just their ideas have failed everywhere they have been tried, that doesn't mean to them that the next time it will work.

The Democrats aren't interested in the quality of healthcare in our nation. They just want complete control over it to turn it into another patronage boondaggle.

Government Intervention at the state and federal level are one of the primary causes of Health Care and Health Insurance cost increases – and Bacus/Obama care proposes a vast increase in this government intervention! The continued underpayment by the Federal government from the Medicare program is at present made up for by medical providers by passing the losses they are forced to take treating Medicare patients on to Private Health Insurance firms and self-payers in the form of higher billings for similar treatments. For privately insured individuals, this is reflected in higher premium costs. None of the proposals you support would change this dynamic in the least. In fact, your support of the Individual Mandate provision would simply accelerate and worsen this trend. I can see where this is good thing from the perspective of a Washington politician but this is very bad for average Americans.

Several state government policies which basically prohibit Health Insurance companies from offering a full range of policies and pricing based on risk has also lead to skyrocketing costs. Rules such as one-size-fits all "community rating" laws to equalize pricing and mandatory coverage of everything from Mental Illness to sex changes have effectively turned Health Insurance companies into pre-paid medical plan administrators. Democrats propose to take this bad trend and the state level and elevate it to federal law. Again, this will cause prices to skyrocket.

Next, the lack of a truly competitive Health Insurance market effectively eliminates the possibility for price competition. Several states have laws and regulation such as I cited above that basically keep smaller Health Insurance firms from entering into that state’s market. This had led to a proliferation of several state semi-monopoly markets for large Health Insurance firms. Democrats support of a Federal Health Insurance “Exchange” concept would basically take these bad state policies and make it Federal law. In essence, you advocate the creation of a national Health Insurance Monopoly for in your support of the so-called "Exchange" idea – only the biggest and wealthiest firms can afford to compete. This will have the effect of reducing competition and choice and push costs ever upwards. And to make matters worse, you give these large and wealth Health Insurance firms millions of unearned customers thru your support of the Individual Mandate! The experiment with Mandatory Insurance in MA, TN, and HI has shown that costs will soar under this kind of scheme.

From Democrats public statements, one would have guessed they were no friend of large Health Insurance firms but their actions indicate that they are actually one of their biggest supporters! If you truly wanted to squeeze the “Evil” Health Insurance industry and bring insurance costs down you would force them to compete for our business not deliver it to them on a silver platter!

Finally, a large driver of costs in Health Insurance and medical treatment is simply due to an aging population. There are a huge number of baby boomers who make up a large portion of the Health Care customer base (80 of 135 million), so naturally their increasing costs of medical care must be passed on other policy holders. Again, the Democrats so-called "solutions" does nothing to address meeting the demand which is the true underlying cost driver! Unless Democrats are prepared to outlaw aging, we should be looking at ways to increase the supply of Medical services and empowering patients to act as cost conscious consumers not simply forcing more people to dump more money in the pot. Democrats support of the Individual Mandate forces the young and healthy to buy more Health Insurance then they may need or want to cover the costs for the old and sick. Again, this is a very disingenuous and coercive way to simply paper over the problem and simply props up the worst features of the present system.

MY OCT 14, 2009 PREDICTIONS…THE HC PLAN WILL….

1…Cost at least 800 billion (borrowed money mostly) and current fraud will never be properly addressed (as usual)

2…Include at least 10-20 new fees and taxes (passed on to the consumer of course)

3…Have dozens of new unelected panels, boards and commissions

4…Cause rationing at some level for some groups

5…Give birth to HC Reform II within 3 years (because the socialists never get it right or all the control they want)

6…Cause major paperwork headaches for the medical-insurance industry

7…Be proclaimed by the socialists "a great reform that will eventually be superior" (but that day never arrives)

8…Be at least twice as expensive 5 years from implementation than socialist estimates this year

9…Not address properly the 3 main helpful cost issues (portability, multi-state plans and tort limits)

10..Cause even more seats to be lost by the socialist party late next year (as details-effects start becoming known…see above)

The socialist democrat party leaders will rejoice and brag as if they balanced the budget yesterday and won the PowerBall this morning.

Its always intentions and words for the rainbow dust crowd….never results and reality.

The gov-meant will not improve HC…if that was true then all those other huge medi-programs would not now be broke and full of fraud that is never cut out…just talked about for years.

Their bill is gonna hurt. Really hurt.

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http://conservablogs.com/theconservativecrawfish