Cut the pork from the bill -- this should reduce it to about 2 pages. It contains nothing of value regarding health care. Kill the bill. As Dr. Starner Jones said, we have a culture crisis, not a health care crisis (see his letter below).

Dear Mr. President:
During my shift in the Emergency Room last night, I had the pleasure of evaluating a patient whose smile revealed an expensive shiny gold tooth, whose body was adorned with a wide assortment of elaborate and costly tattoos, who wore a very expensive brand of tennis shoes and who chatted on a new cellular telephone equipped with a popular R&B ringtone.

While glancing over her patient chart, I happened to notice that her payer status was listed as "Medicaid"! During my examination of her, the patient informed me that she smokes more than one costly pack of cigarettes every day and somehow still has money to buy pretzels and beer.

And, you and our Congress expect me to pay for this woman's health care? I contend that our nation's "health care crisis" is not the result of a shortage of quality hospitals, doctors or nurses. Rather, it is the result of a "crisis of culture", a culture in which it is perfectly acceptable to spend money on luxuries and vices while refusing to take care of one's self or, heaven forbid, purchase health insurance. It is a culture based in the irresponsible credo that "I can do whatever I want to because someone else will always take care of me".

Once you fix this "culture crisis" that rewards irresponsibility and dependency, you'll be amazed at how quickly our nation's health care difficulties will disappear.

Respectfully,

STARNER JONES, MD

Great points and Dr. Jones' insights are very helpful! I don't know what the rush is on Obama's part, but it is probably because he realizes this is the only chance he has to do it his way, without compromise, before Pelosi and Reid lose power this November. They should wait and do it right!

I agree that this monstrosity of a health care bill will be a disaster. Just imagine the bureaucratic machine needed to administer a bill of 2000 pages, and the hoops that physicians, hospitals and patients will have to jump through to make sure they don't run afoul of the system. Of course, it will be impossible, just as it is impossible with the current Medicare and Medicaid schemes. What is assured is that even more energy, capital, and time will be apportioned to the bureaucracy and less to patient care.

Although I agree with the sentiments of the Starner Jones letter, I disagree with his plea to the President to fix this "culture crisis". It is not the president's job, nor should it be, nor can it be. We have to stop putting faith in our government to fix everything, particularly our charming president and his power hungry czars. I believe we have a government crisis, which is at the root of both our culture crisis and our healthcare crisis. Fix government, and the other problems will improve. To fix government, we have to stop looking toward the government as the solution to the problems it created. Government screwed up our healthcare by decades of creeping interventionism, so how can we possibly think more government will help? We have become numb to the deep intrusions of government in every aspect of our lives. We have lost the independent spirit and the sense of responsibility for our own actions that we had when we were a freer people.

If you carefully examine the cost and quality of Medicare vs. insurance companies like United Healthcare, BlueCross and BlueShield, it would become obvious to any observer that the best move for the patients and providers in the U.S. would be the extend Medicare to all. As a physician, radiologist, I knew that the best payer was Medicare. As a patient, I now know that Medicare allows me to select any physician and to get the best service from cardiac catheterization to hernia surgery and general medical visits. The large insurance companies have put up such a smokescreen that most people do not know the facts. When you consider the CEO of United Healthcare receives over $100,000,000(actually closer to One Hundred and Forty Million U.S. dollars) in compensation per year you understand the entire story or you should repeat 5rd grade math.
Please, think, do not just repeat the right-wing horse____. Look and the numbers and the suffering. There is an easy fix. Make it happen.
please post this.

That's an interesting comment about 5th grade math progressivemd...

Lets do the most basic math on your suggestion:

Medicare covers about 50 million people. And it is due to go broke in a little over 10 years.

Now lets see...we extend it to all as you suggest...that would be about 6 times the people covered under it now...

Wow Doc you're right! We could all have the best health care available for about 2 years!!

It's amusing that to progressives a little thing called a "budget" takes a backseat to entitlements and is considered "right-wing horse____". Instead of 5th grade match Doc, maybe you should attend a 5th grade history class and try to find a single government run program that has ever saved us money or made money.

The real "horse____" in this debate comes from progressives and the left. They live in an absolute dream world where they see money as the root of all evil and something that can be piled on to our national debt without any consequences. They actually believe that our government can manage our health care and save money doing it.

So yes Doc.."Please think"! Don't just daydream.

Progressive MD -

Please expand on your idea of extending Medicare to all.

I like that it's a current system. Will expanding it hurt or help?

United Healthcare CEO needs to give that money back, what an a**hole making that much money off other peoples health problems.

You are right. There is a cost/benefit equation that must be considered. Let me see, more money spent in Iraq and Afghanistan already that funding extending Medicare to all would cost in perpetuity. How do I figure that? Easy, Medicare health insurance would not be free to the covered; it would be billed to those covered. It would however be a fraction of what they currently pay for coverage. How could that be? The Blues operate on a 20 to 30% overhead and 20 to 30% profit to the shareholder. Medicare operates on 3-4% overhead.
Oh, let me correct the comment about the money spent IN Iraq and Afghanistan; the vast amount of that money never made it into the “war”, it went into the pockets of the owners and lobbyists for the likes of Blackwater (Xe Services LLC) and Halliburton. That is not all bad. When one considers the additional death and destruction that would have resulted if the money actually went into a real war effort, it is better that it was “lost”. Sort of like unnecessary surgery, better to just bill for it (as some have done) than bill and cause pain, morbidity and mortality. Of course you should remember that Bush kept it off the budget. It looked better that way.
BTW, please explain how killing hundreds of thousands Iraqis has done anything other than set the stage for generation of Iraqis to attempt to get revenge.

That right there folks, is what's called progressive desperation and deflection. From health care to the wars in 2.5 paragraphs.

Progressives LOVE to play the "what if" game. Who can't play it?

"What if we didn't have to pay for social security? What could we afford?"

"What if we didn't have to depend on foreign oil right now? What could we afford?"

"What if we weren't at war? What could we afford?"

See? It's easy. It's also called daydreaming. And daydreaming and playing "what if" doesn't pay for things.

It's funny that you chastise our government for corruption and waste while spending a little less than 1 trillion dollars on two wars. But in the same breath would be willing to turn over a third of our economy to this same government without any worry what-so-ever. Are you saying if we give the government 10 times the amount of money we spent on these wars it makes them less likely to waste our hard earned dollars?

And not to get too off topic...but the last time I checked Doc, I don't see Iraqis rioting in the streets and demanding the heads of U.S. Soldiers. They vote. They are doing their best to govern themselves, and things are generally peaceable. Every day you can turn on the news and see all the success stories in Iraq. If your argument was true, and we slaughtered hundreds of thousands of civilians, I can't imagine things would be going so well. Hell, we don't even see protests over there anymore. Why is that? It must be because we killed so many of them they are too scared to protest (rolls eyes).

So you don't like war. Guess what? No one does. But just because you say ridiculous things about it doesn't make it true. It's more of that progressive daydreaming where you imagine the imperialistic United States wholesale killing civilians to steal oil. Again, real life doesn't support your argument.

Obama flip flops on nuclear option from his stance 5 years ago?

From New American: "More traction for claims of bribery is gained by a closer look at the charges being levied at the Obama administration for trying to trade a judicial appointment for a favorable vote. Congressman Jim Matheson (D-Utah) voted against Obamacare I, and was invited to the White House last week for a conversation and a briefing about healthcare by the President. This appeared to be entirely proper, except for the announcement on the very day of that meeting that a long-delayed appointment to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals was for Matheson’s brother, Scott Matheson."