BigMike252 on July 15, 2009 at 12:39 PM

I’ve directed this question to both of my State Senators, and have received responses from both of them; in both cases they failed to answer my direct question, talking around the question. See below:

Dear Kim:

Thank you for contacting me about health care reform. I appreciate hearing from you on this very important issue.

There is little disagreement about the state of America’s health care system. It’s broken. Today, 47 million Americans, including thousands of Montanans, find themselves without health insurance either because they’re denied coverage by insurance companies or because they can’t afford it. Millions more Americans are finding that health insurance doesn’t cover sky-high medical costs. The link between health care and the financial security of working families is undeniable. Just last year, the average household spent more than a quarter of its income on health insurance premiums. This trend is unsustainable.

Reforming a health care system as complicated as ours requires us to work together. In my over 30 years of serving Montanans, I’ve faced no greater challenge. We can’t afford to ignore the serious issues facing our health system any longer. I understand we won’t agree on every detail of comprehensive health care reform. There are trade-offs with any proposal. Radically changing American health care by adopting a single-payer system, for example, is not a solution that could pass in either the House or Senate. We are not Canada or Great Britain. America needs a uniquely American solution with both private and public funding.

Last November, I released my plan, “A Call to Action,” that offers a starting point for reforming America’s health system. My plan has three primary goals: (1) make health care more affordable, (2) increase the quality and value of the care that’s provided and (3) ensure coverage for all Americans. To accomplish any one of these goals, we must succeed on all three. For starters, we need health coverage for all Americans. Covering every American will help make insurance more affordable by preventing costs from shifting to those who have insurance.

Expanding insurance coverage doesn’t mean we are going to limit people’s options. Under my plan, if you are happy with the insurance you have, you can keep it. But if you’re uninsured or you lose your health insurance coverage, you will be able to purchase affordable coverage through a “health insurance exchange,” a one-stop shopping place for affordable insurance. If your income is too low to afford coverage, you can get a subsidy to help pay premiums. Small businesses will be offered a new tax credit for offering health insurance to their employees.

We also need to improve the quality of health care delivered in our system. The United States spends twice as much per person on health care as any other nation in the world. Yet we rank 19th out of 19 industrialized countries in terms of preventable deaths. Clearly, more care doesn’t always mean better care. Too often, patients are subjected to unnecessary tests and treatments simply because their doctors don’t know their full medical history. My plan rewards care that works, rather than wasteful and ineffective treatments. In doing so, it takes steps to reestablish primary care as the backbone of the health care system by paying primary care doctors more and providing incentives for medical students to choose a career in primary care. We also need a delivery system that helps physicians coordinate and manage medical care, and one that focuses more on prevention and wellness rather than treating a condition or illness that could have been avoided.

There are other things we can do to reduce costs as well. We need to invest in health information technology and comparative effectiveness research to better understand what treatments work best so that doctors and patients can make better decisions.

Funding health care reform and making the system more efficient and fair overall depends on our ability to make targeted reforms. For example, one way to invest in reform is to limit the exclusion of employee health benefits from tax. Such a limit would not affect the employer’s tax benefit and incentive for providing health care to employees, but rather would serve to constrain spending. The limit would also be specially designed to protect low-income tax payers. Rest assured any changes to the tax code will be designed to make health care more — not less — affordable for all Americans.

Many of my colleagues in the Senate share my ideas on health care reform. My plan is also generally consistent with President Obama’s vision for health care reform. In instances where our plans diverge, I’m committed to achieving consensus. I understand that there are many different opinions out there, but most can agree that reforming our broken health care system is necessary. Thanks again for getting in touch. Please don’t hesitate to contact me in the future.

Senator Max Baucus

My response:

I’ve addressed this question to both of my Montana State Senators, and both have failed to answer the question. See below:

Wow, you’re committing political suicide with this Max. Montanans are not going to stand for this. Further more, I asked you a simple yes or no question that you failed to address at all. I’m going to save this email from you for the purpose of comparing what you have written-proposed, to what actually happens as this power grab unfolds. You and your fellow Democrats in both houses are meddling in the private sector far too much. I’m 55 years old Max, and I have not seen one example of a government take over of the private sector that has been anything less than a disaster. Federal Government has done a great job running our military; beyond that, not so good…

Once again…

Are you and your fellow politicians going to use the same medical insurance that you are forcing upon us, the taxpayer?

Keemo on July 15, 2009 at 1:47 PM

From instapundit:

ENDING MEDICARE? “Obama’s health care proposal is, in effect, the repeal of the Medicare program as we know it. The elderly will go from being the group with the most access to free medical care to the one with the least access.” So why aren’t we hearing more about this? “The interest groups that usually speak up for the elderly, particularly AARP, are in Obama’s pocket, hoping to profit from his program by becoming one of its vendors. Just as they backed Bush’s prescription drug plan because they anticipating profiting from it, so they are now helping Obama gut the medical care of their constituents.”

Keemo on July 15, 2009 at 4:37 PM