Start over, do health care right

Many letters have recently appeared in Fence Post criticizing the Republican decision to defund or repeal President Obamas’ health care plan. They praise the plan for several reasons such as allowing single students living at home to have coverage, allowing those with pre-existing conditions or who have lost jobs also to be covered.

One rants that all Republican lawmakers and their families should get out of the plan and see how it feels to be without insurance.

Get your facts straight! None of the members of Congress are covered under this plan that is so wonderful (?) for the American people. They opted out while Democratic majorities still controlled both houses.

I can understand where some are coming from, but it doesn’t take a 2,000-page monstrosity filled with bureaucracy, penalties, cumbersome rules and more to provide decent coverage. Nor does it take a plan that collects money immediately but doesn’t provide most of the coverage until 2014.

With the money that our government is spending and wasting, we could establish special risk pools for the above-mentioned situations. Then by limiting medical liability, frivolous lawsuits and allowing individuals to purchase insurance across state lines (which the current plan does not allow), establishing a national panel consisting of doctors, insurance and government representatives to hammer out the details and institute other reasonable changes, we could have a health care plan that would not require 16,000 IRS agents to oversee it, would not be full of bureaucratic double talk and I doubt would require 2,000 pages to explain.

The Republicans are right. Repeal it and start over.

Paul Saam

Gurnee