I am an ordinary citizen, in fairly good health, and am a fortunate recipient of Medicare benefits. During my middle years, our family’s health care was provided through premium-paid private health insurance. This served us well for several decades.
I would like to take this opportunity to write to you regarding the health bills currently being considered in Congress. There has been such a profusion of information released regarding the content and status of these bills, that I feel it incumbent upon me, as a voter and citizen of this country, to address you about my reflections, concerns and suggestions related to some of the content with which I am familiar, not having read the one thousand plus page bill in the House, covering (I hope) only healthcare issues – unlike the expansive stimulus bill that was “stuffed full” of non-stimulus earmarks and projects for special interests, including inducements for legislators to favor the package.
Several proposals in these bills are devastating to individual liberty, freedom of choice, and the entrepreneurial spirit.
I rely on your conscience and sense of duty to read my letter, and more importantly, to read the proposed bill and its amendments in its entirety before voting, so as to familiarize yourself with its complete contents and be in a more knowledgeable position to better predict any vital unintended consequences of such a major structural overhaul to our healthcare system, our financial future and our nation.

Any Government Public Option or Government Sponsored Cooperative, with its concomitant government regulations, restrictions, stipulations, mandates and major fiscal changes regarding our health care system is unacceptable because it is designed so that inevitably all private health insurance will be eliminated, essentially succumbing to a cumbersome, mired-in-paperwork, bureaucratic, nationalized, socialized, government-run medical healthcare system. President Obama has already stated his preference for a government controlled single payer system, i.e. universal healthcare. This will clearly worsen the quality of healthcare in America and significantly increase our nation’s deficit.
Following are a few explanations why healthcare will deteriorate with any government controlled unaffordable program.

1) These proposals are particularly punishing to small business owners and employee purchasers of private policies through harsh mandates, severe penalties and additional painful payroll taxes, forcing increasing numbers of lower-wage earners into government options.
Business owners mandated to pay for health insurance for all their employees, including part-timers, or be heavily penalized (8% of payroll) would either have to insure all workers, invariably forcing all into the least expensive, but most restrictive government option or cooperative where medical decisions are made by government fiat, or be taxed and penalized to death. But with the demise of small-size businesses with payrolls over $250,000, jobs disappear! Surviving business owners, suffering from distressing, exorbitant payroll taxes and/or penalties would likely layoff workers and/or dramatically scale back hiring, leaving largely lower-wage earners vulnerable and demoralized.

2) Government-managed options, similar to HMOs and their cost-cutting features, restrict choice of doctor, restrict specific treatments and use of expensive medications (as in chemotherapy, for example) particularly for non-productive people (read: the disabled and the elderly) in order to contain escalating costs.

3) Government public options or federally sponsored cooperatives, generously subsidized, and competing in the health insurance marketplace, would undercut private insurers eventually with their lower costs, certainly encouraging large businesses (some with union members) to thrust their employees from any more costly (or gold-plated) coverage into the cheaper, but again much more restrictive government option, leaving only Washington-run health insurance on the playing field with limited medical benefits and eventual failure to control fraud and waste as evidenced in our Medicare program.

4) Inevitably, government control of our healthcare is crushing to private initiative and incentive for those involved in our medical economy, including physicians, ancillary medical personnel, hospitals, extended-care nursing and medical facilities, private clinics and pharmaceutical companies, all of whose medical, scientific, technical decisions, fees and salaries would be centrally regulated by government EVENTUALLY! This is stifling for the medical community, notwithstanding the soft, cynical, self-serving support of these bills by the AMA, AARP and Big Pharma, not in the best interests of their members of the first two organizations mentioned. The Obama administration entered into a verbal, mutual (financial) agreement with the drug companies to win their support for universal healthcare. They might, however, find themselves duped if the administration is pushed by their left-wing to disavow an agreed upon arrangement too “agreeable” to Big Pharma!

There is strong opposition to Obama Healthcare by physicians, seniors, the disabled and a majority of Americans who are satisfied by and large with their preferred current private health coverage.

We can learn from our Medicare Entitlement Program. Firstly, we know that seniors’ use of medical services is continuously increasing and secondly, neither patient nor doctor is incentivized to watch costs, each for different reasons.
For patients, long ago, down a “black hole” went a stream of payroll taxes that were meant to provide for seniors, but like social security, the program is today near bankruptcy. Patients who have paid Medicare payroll taxes for years feel “entitled,” rightly so, to quality care. Now, most unfortunately, Medicare medical services will be greatly reduced if Obamacare is passed!
Proposed in these bills are regulations the ramifications of which would result in denial of medical care for “non-productive individuals,” particularly the elderly who have already been taxed for such benefits and continue to pay premiums for Medicare insurance.
In a cost effective effort, massive cuts will inevitably take place to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars over time, RATIONING care on a basis resembling the British “quality adjusted years remaining.” Our government will offer instead, according to proposed bills in Congress, end-of-life counseling. This is unconscionable!
Real reform and equitable revisions can include some of the following avenues of approach to improve medical care and contain escalating costs of quality healthcare for everyone.

A) Priority should be given to making all private health insurers ACCESSIBLE and PORTABLE for all Americans. This means legalizing a nationwide marketplace increasing competition among health insurers. Today policies are restricted by states’ laws and limited to state residence.
Give Americans the opportunity to change health coverage and to transfer coverage from one insurer to another, or from employer to individuals, giving them tax benefits only employers currently receive and enjoy.
Give Americans the opportunity to choose among our nation’s wide array of plans and eliminate government dictates regulating deductibles, services provided and the like to efficiently match individual ability to pay for the medical benefits provided by the policy selected. These government regulations stipulating what services policies must cover – such as holistic medicine, acupuncture, personal trainers, etc. that people previously paid for out-of-pocket greatly increase premiums.
Introducing these reforms and opening up the private health insurance marketplace nationwide to increased competition would encourage innovation of insurance products that would go a long way in reducing premiums overall, increasing number of people covered, enabling those with specific needs such as pre-existing conditions to purchase more affordable coverage and inducing the uninsured to purchase policies.
Federal assistance for Middle America by way of tax credits, and help for the indigent and many uninsured by way of subsidies would surely be FAR LESS COSTLY than would a vast, expansive, bureaucratic, government-run (new entitlement) health option or cooperative eventually resulting in universal health coverage by Washington!

B) Expansion of personal health savings accounts should be encouraged because those who participate, having a vested interest in keeping costs down, use medical services with more scrutiny, discretion and care. It’s their own money they’re spending after all!

C) Health insurers can encourage and control policy holders’ use of medical services wisely with sliding scales of co-payments, deductibles and premiums. The insured will not abuse the system if they have a personal financial stake in helping to control the cost of their own care (similar to the way HSAs work). Any expense to the privately insured would certainly be far less than the many tax increases imposed on all to support a government-managed program – as is readily discernable from the Medicare and Massachusetts experiences for example.

D) Everyone has a special interest in wringing out fraud, waste and abuse from the medical health industry. We need limited federal oversight and guidelines in conjunction with private health insurers, but clearly not control over our medical care via stinging mandates rationing care, particularly for “non-productive” persons, and subjecting an individual’s medical needs to actuarial statistical analysis decided by bureaucrats and politicians laboring on the Independent Medical Advisory Council (IMAC) to contain costs, not save humanity. Physicians should be in charge of medical decisions – not government.
In addition, if past performance is any window to the future, Washington cannot be trusted to run yet another public government option. Evidence the abundance of fraud and waste in Medicare and its near-bankrupt state today.

E) Tort reform is crucial to reducing costs endemic in our medical system. Doctors tend to overuse the system due to the daily practice of “defensive medicine”. Physicians order every test available in their arsenal to avoid potential threatening and costly lawsuits. Astronomical malpractice premiums are passed onto the consumer, increasing costs for everyone.
Why is President Obama adamantly opposed to tort reform? Is it possible that some special interest groups like lawyers and unions are being protected? Is it possible that exorbitant awards “redistribute wealth,” a concept supported by President Obama? Unfortunately, the President does not see fit to reform this systematic abuse that drains untold sums from the medical system. Sadly, it is ignored by our politicians in Congress as well.

F) Major contributors to our escalating healthcare costs are new, expensive technology, treatments, and drugs, all of which absorb enormous funds for research, development and studies, reflecting our innovative creativity in treating disease.
In the name of “cost-effectiveness” we must not destroy the most advanced medical system in the world that brought into our hospitals and body of knowledge new technologies that we all acknowledge raise the cost of care, but from which all Americans, to our good fortune, benefit tremendously. We must not squelch innovation by squeezing our physicians and scientists of their dedicated service.
These brilliant introductions to the advancement of medical care, recognized worldwide, contribute to higher healthcare costs, particularly as it pertains to the elderly who need and utilize more medical services than the younger population, but it is unethical to deprive seniors of these benefits which enrich their lives and extend their lifespan. Health insurers in conjunction with Government-in-Medicare should exert influence and realistic guidelines solely against abuse of expensive care rather than deny human beings the fruits of our high quality medical and scientific knowledge.

G) Of utmost importance, we must not increase our huge and ghastly deficit by introducing yet another permanent government-managed healthcare option centralized in Washington, with perhaps another Czar accountable to NO electorate population whatsoever and accompanied by the excessive cost of additional, onerous layers of bureaucracy. The greater the number of people in the “business of government,” the greater the opportunity for power plays, waste and corruption.
Recently disclosed New Jersey scandals and alleged sweetheart deals, special favors and the like by some of our Representatives, Senators and appointed individuals make voters reluctant to cede more power, control and decision-making to government. The broken promises of our politicians contribute mightily to our cynicism, disgust and distrust of government.

H) To contain skyrocketing medical costs is a major focus of the current proposals in Congress. If passed, these bills, instead will explode our current excessive debt by at least a trillion dollars as assessed by the CBO (a neutral body), incur the wrath of Medicare recipients (on whose shoulders a third of that sum would be carried) and the disabled, eventually imposing on the entire population an expensive, nationalized, federally controlled healthcare system, beggaring ourselves, our children, and grandchildren encumbered with debilitating tax schemes, repressing future economic growth, crippling Americans universally and eventually impoverishing our nation.

I) The bills in Congress undoubtedly would require raising taxes to pay for any government healthcare program. All sorts of taxes are currently being considered, but raising taxes on every tax-paying American family, on businesses, corporations, on every stage of production (with a value added tax, known in Europe as a VAT tax), on incomes, dividends, energy use of gasoline, oil, electricity (through intrusive monitoring), on HSAs, on private health insurers to pay for another stultifying layer of bureaucracy in a government-run healthcare program in addition to a mind boggling deficit from government bailouts, stimulus packages of pork and earmarks geared to special interests and Congressional votes, and budget-busting giveaways and handouts to favored businesses endangers America’s future and is, at best, fiscally irresponsible!
Most pernicious is the continual expansion of government and government encroachment into the most intimate aspects of our lives, our preferences, our daily habits and behavior.

To Congressmen representing voters:

Please read the bills in their entirety before voting because these lengthy proposals, the innumerable amendments, mandates and acquiescence to special interest groups are so complicated, confusing and obfuscating (perhaps deliberately so) that legislators are reluctant to read them. Some cynically retort that it would require “two lawyers and a staff” to understand them!
Buried in this thousand-plus page House bill and unread (as acknowledged by President Obama himself) are regulations and mandates, the ramifications of which the authors don’t want any of us to understand.
The government proposals (and tax hikes sure to be made), if passed, are slated to begin after, well after, elections are held, in 2013, presumably to avoid deepening the current recession, only to be put into effect when the downturn eases, but President Obama wants some version of a bill (hopefully reflecting his preference for a government option) on his desk before the end of the year, insisting on urgency when there is none, possibly via the RECONCILIATION process (if the Democratic partisans deem it necessary), bypassing the genuine will of the people. This stealthy, devious option is, as Senator Schumer has recently stated, still “on the table”. It is a travesty of justice to ram a bill through congress that will affect all of us so profoundly!
Unexamined, imbedded mandates give rise to UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES EVENTUALLY such as:

- Any public option or cooperative will develop eventually into a large, unwieldy, expensive bureaucracy and a single-payer healthcare system controlled by the Washington establishment.

- A severe shortage, eventually of physicians, qualified healthcare personnel, hospitals and extended medical facilities (including cancer care centers) as a direct result of mandated health insurance for all (including what is said to be 45 million additional people), many of whom voluntarily do not purchase health insurance, 10 million said to be illegal immigrants, and probably millions who can’t afford health insurance with current restrictions on accessibility to more affordable policies, and many who, negligently, did not sign up for Medicaid. Finally, people should be responsible for their healthcare, not government.

- Long waits to see primary care physicians as gatekeepers, interminable waits for specialists, and even longer waits to receive treatments for serious health conditions, eventually.

- Inevitable and eventual rationing of medical care due to cost-effective mandates, falling hardest on Medicare recipients, but not exclusively so.

- A demoralization of healthcare providers whose compensation eventually will be dictated by government attempts to control costs.

- A demotivated, highly unemployed youth and young adult population due to slackened hiring by eventually tax-burdened businesses.

- Wealth redistribution eventually via oppressive tax structures, disheartening to the hard-working Americans, half of whom would eventually be taxed to provide for the 50% of Americans who pay no taxes at all.

- A stupefying shrouding of personal liberties, lifestyles and freedoms, eventually.

- And the outrage of Americans who will be reported to the Administration at the request of President Obama by other citizens roaming the internet to find “misinformation disseminated regarding the health proposals or anything that seems ‘FISHY’”!!

It is this very tactic itself that smells “FISHY”! We are still free to speak our minds and voice dissenting, adversarial opinions without being obnoxiously labeled extremists, racists, right-wingers, and having the Speaker of the House insinuate that loud, strong objectors to the House bill display Nazi-like behavior – even calling it un-American to protest!
And now, to have fellow citizens encouraged to inform on other citizens for distributing on the internet anything that sounds “FISHY”? Should I fear signing my name to this document if posted on the internet? Should I fear reprisal for opposing proposed drastic changes to our healthcare system or health insurance this year?
This indeed is an outrageous consequence fueled by these bills currently being considered in Congress.

The House bill is deeply Socialist in its goals and design, Statist in its intent, and painstakingly out-of-sync with American values.
Washington has developed into a culture of cronyism, lobbyists with outsized influence, and corruption that has continued unabated in this Administration in spite of the promises of transparency and honesty.
Government spending has run amok! Instead of curtailing federal extravagance, government bureaucracy is profligate, ever-expanding, and increasingly intrusive, in near total disregard for American industry, business and consumer.
I implore you to scrutinize the bill, debate, discuss and consult with constituents about reforming our healthcare system with integrity and respect for ourselves, our children and our country’s future.
There will be many ideas and recommendations from the people whom you represent. Just ask them!
What do you think?

Sincerely,

Barbara S.

2 separate injections- may be given at the same time-

Whoa Rachel, the first half of your statement makes sense but then you become belligerent on the second half. To claim that Dr. Garner is in bed with the fluoride industry, if there is just thing, is soo conspiracy theory. And as a layman, I know that the whole fluoride thing is still very controversial because it does help with maintaining good teeth. But what’s the “safe” amount? Is there such thing? Is there a safer substitute?
Regarding your P.S on the flu vaccine – I have the same reservation about new vaccines. I have never gotten the flu vaccine but the fact there are 2 strains out there is pretty disconcerting. But nowadays people are more savvy and can do their own research + aware that there are always risk with vaccinations, just like everything in life. Dr. Garner mentions it on the show. What about those people who voluntarily sign on to take the trial batch?
Anyways, hopefully Doctors, CDC & NIH are on top of this and are being honest with the public.

My comments are surrounding the irresponsible viewpoints made by Rachel DePaolo. I have been an avid fan of Dr. Garner for many years now and I am appalled at her slanderous comments

Perusing the Department of Health Website, you will find comments such as, “People who regularly use fluoridated water at the recommended levels have healthier teeth and fewer cavities than those without access to fluoridated water”. And other comments such as, “The action of fluoride in preventing tooth decay provides health benefits throughout life”. The operative word here being “recommended levels”, which Dr. Garner meant on the Fox news segment which you were referring to. By the way, the last five Surgeons General, support community water fluoridation.

Dr. Garner is genuinely concerned for his viewers, as I have been following him for more than 10 years now. How can you make such personal allegations on an individual that you do not have a clue about? Are you aware of the destructive effects of unsubstantiated slander?

I understand that individuals have a right to have an opinion, but I think you could have carried that out in a more responsible way. I too will be copying Jane Skinner, but my guess is that, her too, will disregard your letter as just another disgruntled and over credulous reader.

I agree with Loretta and I fully support Dr. Garner who is a well respected medical authority.
Shame on you Rachel DePaolo. Who do you think you are to make such vulgar accusations? As Loretta mentioned, fluoride in recommended doses is very important. What you are clearly not aware of is that the toxicity of fluoride occurs in very high levels which are well above those found in municipal drinking water or in bottled water. Next time you wish to make such grandiose statements please check your facts and don’t dispell your paranoia and ignorance on the general public!

The Brooklyn College Q&A with Dr. Garner will starts at 12:45 at the Student Center on Campus Road, 6th floor (the Gold Room). To reserve, free of charge, please call (718) 951-5131.
Hope to meet you there.

The book of Psalms

answer is psalm 150 chapters

The book of Isaiah

WHERE IS MY PLAQUE THAT I WON ? THE ANSWER TO THE QUIZ WAS JIMMY CARTER, I WAS THE FIRST TO CALL IN AND I UNDERSTAND FROM WATCHING YOUR SHOW ON TUESDAY OCT. 19, 2010, I WAS THE 13TH WINNER. I CALLED AGAIN ON OCT. 19, 2010 AND GAVE THE WOMAN THE INFORMATION AGAIN REGARDING MY NAME, TELEPHONE NUMBER AND ADDRESS, SHE INFORMED ME THE PRODUCER WOULD CONTACT ME. AS OF YET NO ONE CALLED TO CONFIRM THIS. I WANT TO HANG IT UP IN MY LIVING ROOM. IT WAS FROM THE SHOW WHO WAS THE ONLY PRESIDENT NOT BORN IN A HOSPITAL? ANSWER JIMMY CARTER