Is this legal??? Doesn't this equal intimidation on behalf of the government that infringes on our 1st amendment rights??

From the White House Blog:

"There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov."

Let me say it again.....Doesn't this equal intimidation on behalf of the government that infringes on our 1st amendment rights??

If I send on an email that enumerates reasons why the current heathcare plan in congress won't work, or why it isn't exactly what the President keeps saying it is, or why that particular person who sent it to me doesn't like it and it makes it's way to someone who read the above statement and thinks that maybe it might be "fishy" am I know going to have my communications "flagged" by the White House? Seriously? What will they do with all of those email addresses that will most likely be in the header of a massively forward email? Or all of the people who leave comments on a blog post just like this that may be against the Presidents current plan. Or the person writing the blog itself. What is wrong with dissent? What is wrong with commenting on the affairs of our world? What is "fishy" about having a differnt point of view than the powers that be?? Isn't that why we have a bill of rights? To protect everyone's differing points of view? I'm sorry but I really don't see anything "fishy" about that.

What I do find "fishy" is that the white house is trying to undermine my 1st amendment rights by intimidation..

Is doing the morally right thing despite the consequesnces really morally right???

Many of my more liberal friends (whom I love and respect, truly I do!) have said that making sure that every one in this country should have access to healthcare and that they are willing to pay higher taxes to make sure that happens. They say it is the morally right thing to do. And when you think about it with emotions and in the terms of "little Sally with lukemia" who can't get the treatments she needs because her parents can't afford them yada yada yada, I agree it would be the morally right thing to do. But this current bill isn't about making sure that "little Sally" gets treatment. It is about undermining the private insurance industry. It is about more government control and more government regulation. It is about someone other that me being allowed to make decisions about what is the "evidenced based" care that I should recieve. So if there isn't a study that shows that treatment A is better than treatment B, and treatment B works for the "majority" of patients, then I won't have access to treatment A unless I pay out of my pocket. Someone please tell me how that is any different that what insurance companies do now?

An example of this are the prescription drug formularies that most insurance companies have now. They are a list of drugs that are "approved" for coverage. When Austin first started on allergy medications, our current insurance didn't have Zyrtec on its formulary, then alternative was Allegra. Allegra gives me migraines. Up to this point Austin's reactions to drugs, food, allergins, etc had been EXACTLY like mine. There was no way I was going to give my 2 year old a medication that gave me severe headaches. BUT because it was the "approved" drug on the formulary, I had only one other choice. I had to pay for the Zyrtec out of pocket (it was not OTC at that point) which ended up being almost $90 a month. So much for evidence based care lowering people's health care costs.

I have serious doubts about the consequences of the government being involved in life and death decisions. I still get to make those for my children and myself, despite having insurance. I honestly don't think nationalized insurance is going solve our problems. I doubt it will actually fix the access/cost of care issues. Add to that the fact that the historically it costs the government more to do anything that the private sector can do. How is that going to save us money on our health care? In fact in a recent "Time Magazine" poll the respondents believed the "legislation is likely to raise health-care costs in the long run (62%), make everything about health care more complicated (65%) and offer less freedom to choose doctors and coverage (56%)" How is this going to be better than what we have today?

People all over the political spectrum have said that Insurance is part of the problem. The way insurance is handled will never bring costs down. Costs only come down by choice by the provider (yeah right), government regulations (didn't work for energy, which is why it was de-regulated), or free market correction. With the exception of adjustments for inflation, the free market historically is a much better way to cost correct. The problem is that our health care isn't a free market. Because of heath insurance we don't really pay for the actual care we use, we pay a set amount on a monthly basis. We may have a higher co-pay from time to time, but we don't feel the pinch of real medical costs (we being the majority of Americans who have the typical hmo/ppo type plan through their employer). If people paid cash for their medical care that would change drastically! Not that I want that to happen trust me. But this leads me to another point. If soooo many people out there were having to pay out of pocket for medical care that was too expensive then why hasn't the market corrected? Perhaps because the actual number of people in this position is a lot smaller than we are lead to believe? Just a thought.

Fixing the problems with medical liability(so we can have more practicing doctors who make decisions based on what is best for the patient NOT because it will keep them from getting sued), funding clinics (to provide immediate access), and regulating prices for drugs and procedures (making care affordable) is what I have seen to be our biggest issues. (more on that later)

If you read through the basic points of the bills before the house and senate, it is all about health INSURANCE reform and not very much about health CARE reform. I want reform, but the right reform in the right way. OH and btw it is my constitutional RIGHT to have this opinion. I respect every American citizen's right to his or her own opinion, but I don't have to agree. Remember this one? Dissent is the highest form of patriotism! It is important for our Republic to continue to succeed that EVERYONE has their voice heard. Not just the popular opinion. It it equally important that when the majority of people let their views be known to our government representatives that those representatives actually listen. IF this particular health care bill gets discarded or changed to fit what "We the people" want which is fix what's broken and leave what isn't the hell alone, then I will have faith that our system is still working. If this thing passes as is, then I will have my belief that we as a country are broken reinforced. It has been broken for a long freakin' time. "We the people" will have ceased to matter and the Washington elite will have won.

Get the duct tape!!

My head IS exploding! I can't believe the stuff I'm reading, hearing, seeing in America today. People who believe that letting the government "require individuals to purchase their own health insurance" or pay extra in taxes and be placed with or without their consent on a public care option. What happened to freedom of choice???? (for a party that is all about choice this seems a bit totalitarian to me) Oh and btw that quote is directly from our President's press conference last night.

What about free enterprise and the American dream? Hard work, personal responsibility, and learning from failure. So many of America's greatest success stories come out of a multitude of failures. Milton Hershey, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, R.H. Macy. All failed multipule times before they finally succeeded to sweeten our lives, change our world, bring us light, and give us joy. All were products of a time when people actually belived in personal responsibility, hard work, creative thought, and giving it your all.

What happened to that? When did our country become a country of handouts, bailouts, and rescues? When did we stop taking care of our own problems instead of demanding that the government fix the predicament we got ourselves into?

I am saddened that the America of my youth is gone, that the America of my children's future looks like a place where the governement will own every dime they make and every dime their children make to pay back all of this debt. I'm saddened that instead of building a better tomorrow we are borrowing that prosperity for our own selfish greed today.

I sit here in my little townhouse that we barely fit in as a family, happy that we have our 1 car, happy to have a full pantry, and thrilled that my husband still has his job. Knowing we just barely make ends meet and keep this quaint little life of our rolling along. And then I see this dark cloud on the horizon that is filled with exponentially higher taxes and wonder what will give in my little world first. Which child will have to go without school pictures next year, can those jeans my oldest is wearing be patched to be handed down to my 2nd born? Can I learn to cut my husband's and children's hair myself? How many more miles can we make it on the nearly bald tires?

Sounds selfish, probably is, but I really don't care right now about the state of healthcare. I care a hell of a lot more about the state of our bank account and the past due notices that could start arriving if we have to pay out any more in taxes. I am happy with my health coverage thank you. I won't complain, because we are just fine with what we have. I have no problem with taking care of others and making sure they have a place to see a doctor, but I don't think the current solution will even come close to fixing the problem.

Why is it that a stay at home house wife can see the root of the problem? Over inflated lawsuit rewards. The sue happy public that blames doctors for everything that is wrong with them rather than taking, oh wait here's that phrase again, personal responsibility! Lack of support for preventative care, alternative care (thanks FDA), and choice in care. Out of control, unfair pricing that charges one amount for the insured and a totally different one for the uninsured. Or one price at the hospital for a certain medication and a totally different one at the pharmacy. No lie after I got the bills from my surgery in March I was livid to see that the hospital charged me over $600 of the oxicodone I received while I was there for 3 days. The same medication that I got a 3 week supply of from the pharmacy for $5 (actual out of pocket cost because we were into our deductible at that point). Herein lies the problem folks.

As for those millions supposed uninsured Americans. There are a good many of them who are uninsured by choice. There are many who don't take advantage of what IS available because no one has given them the information that it IS available for them or their children. And some don't care. Wouldn't go to a doctor even if it was completely paid for. And honestly I don't think health insurance is really the answer.

A friend of mine pointed out something really interesting to me and I would pose the same question to you. Would you pay $150 a doctors visit for well child checks if you had to pay for it out of your pocket or would you go to a different doctor (all qualifications being equal) who only charged $75? Would you pay $3 a pill for a name brand drug or would you choose the $0.75 per pill genaric? Would you go to the ER for a mild fever if you had to pay for the visit or would you take some Tylenol, drink a lot of fluids, and get some rest (pretty much all the ER doc will tell you to do)? For me I would make the choice that provided the most value to my family. If I had two options with the only difference being price, I would choose the lower price. If everyone did that the market itself would keep the costs of healthcare down. The reason the market doesn't work is because the consumers themselves are NOT paying for their purchases out of their own pockets. We cut coupons for cereal, buy in bulk, and wait for sales in all other areas of our consumer spending EXCEPT in healthcare. Why? Because insurance companies out to make money off the healthy in order to pay for the sick only charge us a flat rate that doesn't really change that much no matter what our consumption of the product is. This system doesn't allow for free market corrections in price and quality. It is a false sense of security and now we are paying the price.

So here I sit, worried, confused, feeling lied to and betrayed by a governement whose jobs we provided, but that has forgotten that the trade off is that they are supposed to listen to us.

All I can do is hope that some or a lot of people with loud enough voices can do something to stop the downward spiral I see, before it is too late and we have traded away our liberties, privacy, and rights for the false security of government run healthcare, government owned private enterprise, and government mandated insurance for everyone that costs more than it is worth.