Not buying story about reform success
We've been told how the new federal health care plan will help us, using the program currently in place in Massachusetts as an example. The following information is my understanding of the Massachusetts situation which suggests that we may not have been given the full story, or a bad example was chosen.
That state imposed individual and employer mandates in 2006, with the following results. By 2010, one third of the uninsured still don't have coverage, and it's become harder to see a doctor. Health insurance is 40 percent more expensive than in the rest of the country, and Massachusetts is expecting a $2 to $4 billion shortfall over the next decade. Proponents of the new health care plan repeatedly affirm that you and I can keep our present health insurance. But Massachusetts has told 20 percent of its already-insured citizens they had to buy more expensive health insurance because their existing coverage wasn't "good enough."
On another front, Mayo Clinic in Arizona has stopped taking Medicare patients. The doctor's office I visited yesterday morning has a notice posted explaining why they will be reducing their percentage of Medicare patients. Does anyone in or out of government really believe that, with the current and proposed cuts in Medicare, doctor availability will increase? Add to this the news that the tax input versus Social Security payout shift to negative numbers is going to happen well ahead of the projected 2016 date, and we have trouble in River City, which starts with T which rhymes with G which stands for Government.
William Slater
Mundelein