1. The Senate Health Care Bill violates U.S. Constitution in that it blatantly violates the #9 Amendment, Rights Retained by the People
2. The Senate Health Care Bill violates U.S. Constitution in that it blatantly violates the #10 Amendment, Rights Retained by States.
3. The Senate Health Care Bill violates U.S. Constitution in that it blatantly violates the #14 Amendment, Civil Rights
4. The Senate Health Care Bill violates U.S. Constitution in that it blatantly violates the #16 Amendment, Income Taxes

Health Reform- What you need to know
The following considerations should be taken into account when deciding to move nearly 17% of the GDP ($2.23 Trillion) of the US into a government controlled program.

First, the US healthcare system is the envy of the world. America produces nearly 60% of miracle drugs and medical devices which save lives and costs of treating patients worldwide. Today, people take a pill on an outpatient basis when 25 years ago the same treatment would have required hospitalization, and invasive and risky surgery at considerable costs along with lost work and rehabilitation time. It is argued that some people are not covered by insurance and therefore have exposure to significant costs and reduced access to needed care. One figure used over the years is between 40 and 48 Million Americans have no health insurance. Few real studies have been conducted to verify this number. Let’s take a closer look at this.

So, who are these uninsured People?

1. There are 17.2 Million college students in America (according to the US census in 06). Many of these students do not have health insurance if their parent’s health policies drop them at a certain age or if they are not still living with the parents. But they do have an insurance plan covered under the University if they sign up for it. They do have basic coverage for routine medical problems and usually have a low utilization rate for hospitalization and advanced physician intervention given their youth and by definition general good health.

2. 15.9 Million of these uninsured are of predominantly Hispanic decent many of them illegal entrants to the US likely working for cash wages with no taxes taken out. They are living in Southwestern states as well as NY, NJ, etc. And millions more are still coming. The planned Universal healthcare solution appears to suggest that Medicare recipients who paid taxes their whole life are now going to have their benefits cut, in part, to pay for illegal entrants.

3. There are 21.2M white; 6.6 M Black and only 2.1 M Asian adults who have no health insurance. In a free country, there are young and healthy people who elect to not spend $400 per month on health insurance they don’t think they need and invest instead in a car payment.

Some of these 29 Million are simply people who lost or quit jobs. . It is also worth noting, that, 45 percent of uninsured people will be uninsured for less than four months according to the Congressional Budget Office. In other words they are uninsured for only a short time.

Accounting for all those factors, one prominent study places the total for the long-term uninsured as low as 8.2 million – a very different reality than the media and national health care advocate’s claim of 48 million.

But according to the same Census report, there are 8.3 million uninsured people who make between $50,000 and $74,999 per year and 8.74 million who make more than $75,000 a year. That’s roughly 17 million people who ought to be able to “afford” health insurance because they make substantially more than the median household income of $46,326. Apparently, they choose not to be covered for medical care. America was built on Freedom to Choose.

Let’s also not forget that laws have been passed that require Hospitals to treat people regardless of their ability to pay. In effect, we already have universal free healthcare. Anyone can walk into an ER and demand treatment without an insurance card already.

Subtracting non-citizens and those who can afford their own insurance but choose not to purchase it, about 20 million people are left – less than 7 percent of the population.

So what is the true extent of the uninsured “crisis?” The Kaiser Family Foundation, a liberal non-profit organization frequently quoted by the media, puts the number of uninsured Americans who do not qualify for current government programs and make less than $50,000 a year between 8.2 million and 13.9 million. That is a much smaller figure than the number most often reported in the media. Lastly, Kaiser’s 8.2 million figure for the chronically uninsured only includes those uninsured for two years or more. Lastly, even Obama has revised his own estimates…”The Census report indicates that of the 46 million uninsured individuals, 34 million were native born and 2.8 million naturalized citizens. The report thus shows that there were 36.8 million uninsured U.S. citizens (native born and naturalized) in 2008.” But the census does not tell us how long these were uninsured or why.

The true number of uninsured in American is far below 36.1 million. The bottom line is why don’t we create medical savings account for each of these 36.8 million with access up to $ 2500 each from which to deduct payments for insurance and treatment for any pre existing condition. So why force all 300+ million Americans into a system the overwhelming majority of Americans don’t need or want to pay to help between 5 and 10 % of the population? Why spend $850 Billion. This has little to do with solving a small healthcare gap in coverage. The answer appears to be Votes and Power to socialize the country!

Other things you should know
The Government itself is a major cause of rising healthcare costs

1. In 1960 the healthcare bill in the US was only $5 Billion and 5.1% of the GDP and cost only $141 per person. Our parents paid nearly 60% of the healthcare bills out of pocket as many routine things were not covered only major expensive things were.

2. In 2007, the U.S. spent a projected $2.26 trillion on health care, or $7,439 per person. The government now pays 47% of the healthcare bills [4]. And together with Third party insurance companies Americans now only pay 17% of the bill out of pocket.

3. The health share of GDP is expected to continue its historical upward trend, reaching 19.5 percent of GDP by 2017. [2]

As the role of government in healthcare increased the costs went up astronomically. Health care costs have risen 454 times higher since 1965! When Medicare started in 1965, its budget was $1 Billion. In 2008, the Medicare costs were $454 billion accounted for 14 percent of the federal budget, and federal spending on Medicare is expected to grow to $524 billion by 2011. Medicaid was started in 1965 with a budget of $1 Billion the same as Medicare. Federal Medicaid expenditures were $180.6 billion in 2006, as compared to $181.7 billion in 2007. So, Medicaid has risen 181 times higher since 1965 while Medicare has risen an ASTOUNDING 454 TIMES. By comparison, Gas Prices have only risen about 8 times since 1965. Housing, food, recreation, etc are all less than ten times higher. The notion that the government can add millions to the rolls of the insured and somehow decrease costs is not mathematically possible. The only way any Universal Healthcare plan could expand access to millions of people and simultaneously REDUCE healthcare costs would be to deny care to millions of people. Or cutback on many of the non medically necessary services which were mandated as requirements for insurance companies and reintroduce some co payment and deductibles to replace first dollar coverage insurance plans thereby creating some sense of price competition between providers of care which is virtually nonexistent in healthcare outside managed care capitated contracts which were despised by many.

4. 15% of the people use 85% of the healthcare benefits. A portion of this group includes people with chronic conditions that demand a lot of medical care over a long time period. They also contain some elderly people who consume a large amount of healthcare benefits in the last 6 months of their lives. Also well represented in this high utilization group, are self inflicted maladies by people who do not practice healthy living habits. They are often people who consume alcohol, drugs and food to excess. They also have poor health habits and lifestyles which lead to repeated injury and care. And also immigrants who practice poor prenatal care can result in complicated premature births. Several women already bankrupted one re- insurance company in California with claims that exceeded $1 Million dollars each. Another similar case stayed in the hospital in Florida for over two years resulting in a multimillion dollar uncovered treatment bill. Americans have for years been paying extra for all these kinds of cases. People have not been dying in the streets or denied care for lack of money to pay.

4. Many, many things are now covered under insurance contracts that are not medically necessary and are not insurable events. Politicians lobbied and passed laws to cover virtually everything. Dental disease (everyone has it), sex change operations (really cosmetic and not medically necessary), etc. Insurance was meant to cover things that were catastrophic, happened infrequently and were very expensive. Car accidents, brain tumors, heart attacks. Today we cover everything as insurance. And with the UAW leading the way in the 50”s many have demanded first dollar coverage. In effect, many Americans already have a policy which covers all but a $15 co pay. 15% of patients seeing GPs have nothing wrong with them physically. They are worried well. Yet their visits are paid for. Many others are using drugs, drink a fifth of alcohol per day, have gained 100 pounds, or drive motorcycles recklessly without helmets and have multiple self inflicted healthcare expenses.

5. Another reason costs are rising is medical doctors insist on tests and doing procedures as a form of protection against lawsuits. And doctors and hospitals have a small army of people hired to deal with regulations, compliance and paperwork. Your healthcare bill contains about 25% extra for administrative and medical legal recordkeeping. That’s 25% of $2.26 TRILLION! Much of this expense is due to regulations or in record keeping along with defensive medicine required for medical liability issues. Note that no Health Reform bill has yet addressed this monstrous contributor to your healthcare bill. That is because the trial lawyers like John Edwards make billions off of hospitals and doctors suing them every year and contribute heavily to the Democratic party.

6. Your healthcare is often paid for by a third party. Neither the Dr nor you spend much time asking about costs because it’s “covered”. You are still paying this bill indirectly in the form of lost wages. Your employer could be giving you the money to buy your own plan perhaps with a high deductible like it used to be in the 60’s. 85% of Americans would save a lot of money by moving to this kind of system.

7. Healthcare costs are expensive because there is no free market competition between doctors and hospitals competing for your dollars. Healthcare costs have risen astronomically and quality has improved marginally in comparison. By comparison, you can buy a computer today for $500 that is twenty or more times more powerful and a tiny fraction of the cost of a computer in 1970? And the quality of that computer capability increased ASTRONOMICALLY at the same time the COST WENT DOWN. Airplane tickets generally the same thing. The quality of the planes went up and the costs remained relatively stable. The price of a transcontinental flight in 07 was similar to one in 1970. Airline tickets and computers were not paid for by the government or your employer. So, it should be vividly clear that once the government gets further involved in healthcare costs will go up ASTRONOMICALLY AND YOU WILL BE FORCED TO PAY THE BILL.

8. Under a Universal healthcare system, you can count on one other thing. Your life will be in danger. See the short film below—Brain Surgery Canada style. For decades, Canadians have had to cross the border into the US and pay cash to get care they needed and could not wait in line without risking deadly consequences. Also an estimated 25,000 people died in France several years ago in August when most doctors like everyone else were on Holiday. Don’t forget also that some of the best doctors left the practice of medicine in all countries where national healthcare went into effect. They came in large numbers to the US. In London, for example, some of the train bombers were doctors in the daytime. The same out migration of the most talented will likely happen in the US. People will be put in waiting lines like DMV. Some will die or be forced to pay separately to save their lives without the government program. You will be forced to pay for the public universal plan like you are forced to pay for public schools. If you want good care you will be forced to pay extra for the private plan. In Britain, private insurance was a big seller after the introduction of socialized medicine. The bottom line is many will be forced to pay for the public program and pay extra to be “covered” by some private option if they can afford it.

9. Insurance companies for decades have employed medical doctors, nurses, and allied health professionals to help deal with the complex decision making on claims submitted for payment. With the exception of the government push for HMOs this process has worked pretty well because of the decades of statistical utilization date and peer review guidelines developed by clinicians familiar with the complexities and subtleties of patient care. Literally decades of experience in managing millions of claims and billions of dollars of clinical decisions. How will such decisions be made under a Universal Healthcare System? Will it mimic the bureaucratic denials of needed care like the HMO movement? Paul Ellwood MD created the original Health Maintenance Organization which focused on getting help to those most in need and early. The purpose was to maintain and contain a serious health risk early in the disease progression. It was the government’s push later that morphed it into a Health Management Organization which focused more on cost containment. Bureaucratic bodies with little appreciation of the complexities of health treatment deciding who gets what kind of care or who waits in line is a decidedly Un- American approach.

10. Under Universal healthcare who will pay for research on new medical devices and lifesaving drugs? It costs about $800 Million and 13 years of research to get a drug through FDA and into your prescription. And only 1 in 500 compounds will make it to the market. People suggest we can buy drugs from Canada. These same people apparently don’t recognize that American private capital investors funded the development of over 50% of the drugs sold on Earth. Canada didn’t spend much of anything. And the Canadians get their drugs from the US. They can only sell them cheaper because they don’t have all of the costs and regulations to pay for when they fill a prescription on a drug whose patent has expired. Further, The National Institutes of Health have $30 Billion per year to research cancer, heart disease and others diseases. It was created by Roosevelt in the 1930’s. Nixon funded the National Cancer Institute in 1973. What have they accomplished so far with the many billions in taxes we paid? Heart Disease and Cancer are still the leading killers despite the many billions spent on research. Where will the money come from to conduct research on new lifesaving drugs and medical devices under a Universal Health Plan? Private Capital invested in companies with new technologies helped make America the greatest repository of lifesaving treatments in the world. Now what?

11. We have already tried to demonstrate the efficacy of Health Reform in two States Hawaii and Massachusetts. In both States the programs have Failed. In Hawaii, the program was terminated by the Governor in 7 months. Too many employees quit their health plan to go with the “free” plan and it sank the State Budget. In Massachusetts, the State is now $5 B in the hole.

Every member of Congress should be asked one simple question before voting on this bill. If we cannot make it work in a simple test in two small States how will it work in all 50 without more careful deliberation and testing before implementation?

Summary
There are not 48 Million people in the US without access to needed health care. We still have the best treatment system in the world. We have let politicians dictate what things must be covered by insurance that are by definition not insurable events and not medically necessary. Government involvement in healthcare since 1965 has led to GEOMETRICALLY ESCALATING COSTS like no other item in the average American family budget. It has increased 454 times compared to gas prices that has increased only 8 times. How will the same government that controls our education system, that manages DMV, AmTrak, the Post Office, Freddie and Fannie, that handled the Katrina hurricane, that has supervised our energy development, that manages our immigration system, that declared war on drugs, that launched a war on poverty in 1965 (the same exact 13% of Americans still live in poverty as in 1965), that created Head Start, etc. give you universal care THAT COVERS 30+ MILLION NEW PEOPLE WHILE SIMULATANEOUSLY DECREASES HEALTHCARE COSTS? Government programs have failed 85% of the time. And Based on 43 years of experience it is highly unlikely they can manage anything as complex as healthcare.

Is it not the case that most all of the socialist nations on the planet have one thing in common besides “free” healthcare? Don’t they all have humongous taxation and regulatory environments? France has had an out-migration of wealthy citizens for decades. Most French citizens cannot afford a home due to the taxes. And an estimated 25,000 people died in the heat several years ago during August when most of the doctors were on Holiday. The fastest selling product in Britain after its conversion to a Universal System was Private Insurance for those who did not trust the government with their very lives. And the Canadians virtually survived by driving or flying to the US for needed services for decades. See Brain Surgery: Canadian Style:

This film should be watched by all Americans. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLJxmJZXgNI>

I have 5 children, all of whom I mostly as a single mother brought up and most lof them college educated without any help from their father or the government. I worked very hard to do this and yet I have NO debts. I thus do not have a lot of retirement money but lately fear I won't have enough to live on at the age of 76 due to high taxes and our "out-of-control government spending. Please do NOT ruin our country and our economy with your "out-of-control-spending" and start realizing that we, the people, came from our heritagewho built this country as a Christian nation with huge controls on spending!!! I am one of those "Sons & Daughters of the Revolutionary War" and my forefathers paid a huge price for our independence with their lives which our congress and senate in Washing DC is doing a GREAT job of shattering! STOP the insanity spending; give us our own insurance with court reform etc and stop the insanity of the bail-outs. Don't you know that we self employed people have no-one to bail us out and this is NOT fair to the largest portion of our citizens. I plead for you all to take note and realize your heritage. This USED to be the greatest nation on earth and in a short time you are making a mockery of it! Just stop the insanity and give us back our freedom!! Joanne (Bushnell) Wiley

There should be an amendment striking the Accountable Care Organization model for Medicare beneficiaries. see Sect. 3022 Medicare Shared Savings Program p. 739 - 751 of the latest Senate bill, The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The ACO model encourages doctors and/or suppliers to group together and if their practice achieves savings for Medicare , i.e. comes in under a target benchmark goal set by the HHS Secretary for that year, then the group of doctors will receive a payment from the HHS Secretary for that year. This is shameful. It clearly is bribing doctors and/or suppliers to cut services for Medicare fee for service beneficiaries. Further, on p. 749, it states that there shall be no administrative or judicial review of the assessment of the quality of care furnished by the ACO as well as the establishment of performance standards of an ACO.

Section 5201, page 1317: The "sense of Congress" suggests that funds repaid under a loan program should not be put in the Treasury or "otherwise used for any other purpose other than to carry out this section." This is awfully vague terminology for how money repaid can be spent.

Sec. 5203, p. 1319: Government becomes too involved in the employment of doctors: "The Secretary shall establish and carry out a pediatric specialty loan repayment program under which the eligible individual agrees to be employed full-time for a specified period…."

Sec. 5203, p. 1321: This bill covers far more than health care: "Child and adolescent mental and behavioral health," which consists of psychiatry, psychology, school psychology, behavioral pediatrics, psychiatric nursing, social work ... marriage and family therapy, etc. (This is under the heading of "Tomorrow's Pediatric Healthcare Workforce.")

Sec. 5203, p. 1321: "In entering into contracts under this subsection, the Secretary shall give priority to applicants who: have familiarity with evidence-based methods and cultural and linguistic competence health care services" (emphasis added). Culturally competent healthcare??!!

Sec. 5204, p. 1327: This bill converts doctors into the much-discredited indentured servant model of the Jamestown settlement 400 years ago: "Obligated service contracts-health workers contract to work with the government for a set time.”

Sec. 5207, p. 1333: We're going to have a "National Health Service Corps"! Like the disastrous British health system!

Sec. 5210, p. 1338: Look at all the public health worker positions being established by the bill. What’s wrong with just having doctors? "There shall be in the Service a commissioned Regular Corps and a Ready Reserve Corps for service in time of national emergency."

Sec. 5301, p. 1342: Health promotion … and perhaps gun control through "injury control"? "Grants and contracts ‘to plan, develop, and operate joint degree programs to provide interdisciplinary and interprofessional graduate training in public health and other health professions to provide training in environmental health, infectious disease control, disease prevention and health promotion, epidemiological studies and injury control.’"

Sec. 5301, p. 1344: More liberal claptrap, establishing grant priority given to applicants that "have a record of training individuals who are from underrepresented minority groups or from a rural or disadvantaged background" and who ‘‘provide training in the care of vulnerable populations such as children, older adults, homeless individuals, victims of abuse or trauma, individuals with mental health or substance-related disorders, individuals with HIV/ AIDS, and individuals with disabilities."

We come from every walk of life and have in common our determination to restore our Constitutional Republic by enlightening our neighbors and friends.

When the obstetrician Ron Paul became a Congressman he chose to read each bill and if he found no authorization for the power being sought by the Congress he would vote against its passage. He was the sole No vote over 300 times.

He showed us that the Founders spelled out the powers granted to the Congress in Article 1 Section 8. Under the Tenth Amendment all other powers, not prohibited to the States, are retained by the States or the people.

Those interested will find three new articles each day on the Campaignforliberty.com website and an archive of enlightening articles. www.campaignforliberty.com

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