Postcards from the edge

[captainsblog]

My, our snail-mailbox is still all full up despite the recession. You saw the cuter one we got the other day. Now we have my beloved Congressman Chris Lee wanting my opinion on "taxpayer funded, government run health care."  Not a little loaded there, huh, guy?

I am blessed ::koff:: to live in one of the few remaining Republican districts in this state. Originally built for Jack Kemp in the 1980s, it was gerrymandered to even greater GOP advantage after the 1990 census, producing the election of an old Albany hack named Tom Reynolds. Then, when we lost even more seats upstate after the 2000 census and state legislators threatened to form a "fair fight" district between Reynolds and ancient Rochester congresswoman Louise Slaughter, several large bags of cash arrived in several strategically-placed state legislators' re-election accounts, and "Tom's Law" got passed, making his seat even safer and cramming Louise into something referred to as the "earmuff district," connecting the 'hoods of Buffalo and Rochester through a connection thin as a double-yellow line in some places.

Only this built-in advantage, and some photo ops during our 2006 October Surprise snowstorm, saved Tom's ass after his implication in that year's Republican Congressman Sex Scandal (not to be confused with any of this year's dalliances from the Family Values Party), and, figuring he'd had quite enough scrutiny, he retired. Chris Lee, a candidate nominated on a platform of "send a businessman to Congress, not China where I send jobs from MY businesses," won in 2008 in a squeaker of an election, mainly because three Democratic challengers spent most of that year beating each other senseless. He has now solicited my views on the big issue.

Here's what I told him:



By the way? I read Chris Lee's health care plan. It consists of three essential elements:

* Expanding the use of health savings accounts to cut costs. Yawell- I bought into this bit earlier this year until the Evil Stupid Stimulus Bill got us back on COBRA at affordable prices after my wife lost her job and health care during the Bush Administration. It was cumbersome, confusing and didn't do a thing to reduce the cost of my care.

* Implementing tort reform to reduce the incidence of "defensive medicine." Full disclosure: (1) I am a lawyer. (2) I have even less respect for ambulance-chasing, moneygrubbing trial lawyers than the average Republican, because of the ways they clog my calendars, influence legislative policy on the court system and generally make all my clients think we're all like that. That said, I can also give you two other facts: (1) Texas has implemented one of the toughest "tort reform" packages in the country, virtually eliminating the multi-million dollar verdicts that cause doctors to practice "defensive medicine." (2) Guess what state has the metropolitan area with the highest per-capita medical costs in the country? Yer dun tootin', cowboy. It's in Texas- not because the lawyers are chasing ambulances, but because the doctors themselves are chasing profits- building their own testing facilities and surgery facilities and outpatient care facilities and sending the bills to you and me.

* Modernizing the system to make it more efficient, including digitizing medical records. Um, that's in all of our plans, and is, you know, actually one of the key sources of the savings we think will pay for what we want to do?  But when we do it, Limbaugh complains about it being so the government can look at your medical records before they send you out to shoot you, and none of them believe any of the savings can be achieved.

::Olbermannesque headdesk:: So much for Congressman Lee.

By the way, if you want to astroturf him, the way all his fellow Big Health minions are astroturfing us? Feel free to print out the postcard above, addressing it on the back to

Congressman Chris Lee
325 Essjay Road
Suite 405
Williamsville, NY 14221

You'll need to put a stamp on it, though. Unlike Congressman Lee, who gets to disseminate his side of the issue for free. Cheap bastard.

Comments

[glenmarshall.livejournal.com]

Without dwelling on unnecessary details, I am proud to be working directly and constructively on electronic health records and the mechanisms to make them available in ways that improve the likelihood of rapid and good healthcare outcomes, reduce systemic costs, and protect privacy.

The nay-sayers can go fuck themselves... preferably with something cold and barbed.

Vicki likes this.

[bluevicksen11.livejournal.com]

Love the comment.

Re: Vicki likes this.

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

How do you get that thumbs-up thingy on your replies? Someone was just asking today how to do that, and I can't find the code for it.

Re: Vicki likes this.

[bluevicksen11.livejournal.com]

How it works on mine is when you go to make a comment, there's a button at the bottom of the box that says "more options". When you click on it, the comment box will reload, and next to the subject box is a little smiley face. When you click on that , another box pops up with other little faces and icons and stuff, including the desired thumbs up.

[jblaque.livejournal.com]

I salute you, sir.

[headbanger118.livejournal.com]

I would totally be all about the health care plan Congress enjoys. Since I KNOW that WON'T be the plan, I'm going to have to pass on this latest effort by our fine government. I've seen government healthcare in Tennessee (TennCare), watched my sister with MS fight to keep it, and all I can say is: No, thanks.

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

The whole point of this business is to give people a plan they DON'T have to fight to keep, or fight to get things covered. I want to stick my hand through the fax machine and rip the lungs out of these criminals who send me near-daily "affordable health care for small business" junk faxes. These are the "private plans" the wingnuts are so determined to allow you to keep, when all they do is take obscene amounts of your money until you get sick and then look for any reason they can find to "rescind" you. There was a heartbreaking story on NPR a couple of weekends ago about a woman scheduled for breast cancer surgery who got "rescission" pulled on her the day before her operation. Why? She'd failed to disclose a pre-existing condition that they found in her medical records: the dreaded "dermititis." Yes, she had acne once.

And y'all are afraid that OBAMA will send you out to be shot?