Slow down ‘rush’ to health care ‘reform’

If you're a senior citizen on Medicare or Medicaid, I suggest you get on the horn pronto to Nevada's representatives and tell them to slow down any legislation on health care "reform" before you find yourself legislated out of your existing coverage.

Because if what I heard President Barack Obama say last night in his televised demand to Congress to "hurry up" and pass some-kind-any-kind of health care "reform", current Medicare and Medicaid recipients may face old age and end-of-life medical issues not in the privacy of his or her doctor's office, but as part of a national data base run through a government cost-effective committee that will, inevitably, decide who lives and who dies.

Look folks, there's a reason no American goes to Canada for health care. There's a reason American cancer patients live longer than cancer patients in other countries. The reason is health care rationing.

President Obama was not 100% honest last night when he glossed over the end-of-life issues by saying things under his plan would change, but they would only change for the better. How in the world would he know that since no one has any blessed idea exactly what he wants or exactly what Congress is going to legislatively craft. And, how can he say that when he cited countries like the UK as an example of doing a good job containing costs. He knows full well that they do that by limiting life-giving medication and life-extending procedures to people who are too old, or too young, or too sick to be "worth it."

I suspect most Americans agree that the existing health care system in America needs some kind reform. But not any kind of reform. If you care about making health care better and doing it with a full understanding of how it will work, tell the Nevada delegation in no uncertain terms that you don't want to "hurry up", you want to slow down and understand the proposal. Tell them that if they pass anything in a "hurry-up" fashion (as in any time this year) and without reading it or letting you understand it, you will vote against them in 2010.

It was remarkable last night to watch President Obama, who is a great orator, stumble-bumble his way around the specifics of his health care ideas. If he can't articulate the specifics of his plan and if he won't be honest about the serious issues raised by a government rationed medical establishment, then the best recourse is to slow down.

And, as a sidebar, it was cheap of Obama to link health care "reform" to his ability to reduce his unsustainable deficit. He's trying to build in an excuse for his upcoming spectacular economic failure.