To: Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison
202-224-0776
Senator John Cornyn
202-228-2856
Re: Health Care Reform
I strongly urge you to vote for health care reform that includes a public option.
If a public option is not included in the bill, the health insurance industry will continue to overcharge premiums and deny care to patients. As we know from former Cigna executive, now whistle blower, Wendell Potter, the health insurance industry will continue to make obscene levels of profits, based precisely on denying critical care to very sick and dying patients. It will continue to increase premiums.
We also know from the recent report written by the AHIP that the insurance companies will indeed increase its premiums because insurance doesn't like what it read in the Baucus bill. This goes to show you how arrogant and appallingly greedy the health insurance industry has become.
We also know from the town hall meetings this past August at which we heard much about "death panels, "killing Granny," Hitler, and Pol Pot, that many of these rallies were orchestrated by special interests in the health insurance business and groups led by Dick Armey of Freedom Works and Tim Phillips of Americans for Prosperity. In other words, many of those town hall meetings were merely staged events to misinform people and foment fear among seniors. |
| Despite what conservatives like you believe, or say you believe, a public option will not be a government takeover of the health care industry. On the contrary, a public option will introduce competition into a field that has become a solid monopoly. Competition will ensure that prices will decrease and will make health insurance more affordable for American families. I find it ironic really, that conservatives are now against competition.
I also find it troubling and disingenuous that some members of Congress do not believe their constituents deserve the same health care coverage that most if not all members enjoy in Congress. Your coverage, Senators, is the best taxpayer funded government run socialist health care that is affordable. According to a recent ABC news report, members of Congress pay $500.00 per year for the best health care taxpayer money can buy.
The insurance picture is especially grim, if not desperate, in Texas.
• One in four Texans is uninsured, the highest rate of uninsured in the country.
• Texas ranks 51 in access to care in the 50 states and the District of Columbia.
• In the past five years, Texans saw insurance premiums jump 40 percent. That is 10 times faster that the increase in Texans' income.
• Texans pay the third highest premiums in the country.
• In Texas, we pay more, for less. The Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research rates the quality of health care in Texas as "weak," in comparison to other states.
• Texas businesses and families shoulder the hidden tax of roughly $1,800 per year on premiums as a direct result of subsidizing the costs of the uninsured.
• Health care costs are the number one cause of bankruptcy in America.
Recent polls show that the majority of the American people want a public option included in health care reform. All Texans want affordable health insurance, too. We want competition. We want choices and we want affordability.
The uninsured have every right to access. They also have every right to access they can afford. All must have health insurance or a plan that will protect them from bankruptcy.
At the very least, the United States should give its residents what every other industrialized first world nation offers to its people. None other than we the American people have to suffer and die under a reprehensible practice called death by the spreadsheets.
Sincerely yours, |
