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The general topic of this message is Health:
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Subject:
HEALTHCARE REFORM - PUBLIC OPTION NEEDED TO SAVE MONEY AND LIVES
To:
Rep. Mark Kirk
October 30, 2009
Honorable Representative Kirk,
I urge you to reconsider your position and support health care reform with a public option. I am one of the many who rarely expresses their opinions to their elected officials, apart from becoming very active in Congressional and Presidential elections (I noticed you are running for the Illinois Senate seat). Frankly, the private sector is doing a miserable job of managing our country's healthcare. Although I have what is considered to be "good" healthcare insurance right now with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois, I am fed up with the current system. In January 2009, I had to go to the hospital in an ambulance due to an injury. I saw two doctors for less than one minute each, and I was billed over $700 by the ambulance company, only $300 of which my insurance paid. I am making monthly payments on the rest. On top of this, three separate groups from the SAME HOSPITAL have been billing me anywhere from $500 to $1500 EACH. Despite my supposedly "good" healthcare coverage, I have now spent no less than 20 HOURS trying to get my insurance company to pay the bills, to fix my credit. Despite paying the maximum allowable "patient portion" under my policy TWICE (due to paperwork errors), I now have 2 negative entries on my credit report. How are people supposed to get better when all the HOSPITAL AND INSURANCE COMPANY "BUREAUCRATS" are making them miserable trying to collect payment (and trying to avoid paying the patient's bill)?
And what about the people I know who have been denied coverage and told to "just go and die" due to a pre existing condition? Do the private insurance companies really care if people get better? Or do they care a lot more about making profits for their Wall Street investors? Obviously, it is the latter. And what about all the people I know who have been laid off and lost or can no longer afford their healthcare coverage? I was one of them once. Do we as a society not care about these people? The current system tells them to "just go and die". This is just not right.
Despite all the attempts to avoid paying healthcare bills, the costs are still out of control, thanks to the current system that forces hospitals to charge all of us for the emergency care of the poor who cannot afford preventative care, care that would have prevented many of those expensive ER visits in the first place. In the meantime, productivity suffers for small business owners whose workers can't afford preventative care, and it suffers for all businesses because ordinary people like me have to spend 20 hours of their time just to get their hospital bills paid, and their credit saved. Meanwhile, the automotive industry is on the verge of collapse, primarily because it cannot afford the roughly $1500 per vehicle cost of insuring their workers. Their foreign competitors, along with those of American companies across all industries, don't have that burden because their governments provide healthcare security for their workers. No wonder we are losing so many American manufacturing jobs.
All my relatives who live in Canada absolutely love their healthcare system. So do my friends and business associates in France and Great Britain. They don't have to waste countless hours dealing with insurance companies, and they NEVER WORRY about going bankrupt if they get injured. Honestly, the private sector has proven that it CANNOT control healthcare costs. It has also proven that it CANNOT manage care effectively in the best interest of the patient. I am sick of hearing about these people who don't trust the government. They need to wake up and quit being so naive in trusting big Wall Street companies to care for their best interest. That is why the government handles our national defense. Healthcare should be the same.
Finally, we must pass a robust public health care option that encourages Integrative Medicine approaches (like the one followed by Dr. OZ, whose show airs on the Fox Network) if we are to control costs and meet the American people's need for Healthcare Security at the same time. Frankly, pharmaceutical drugs are not the best solution to many health problems. In addition, western medicine has no cure for many ailments. Eastern medicine has the same problem. Combining the two is the only effective approach to keeping the American people healthy and productive.
I urge you to reconsider your position. In the long-term financial best interest of the American people, I urge you to support health care reform with a public option. I will be following all the votes and campaigning actively against anyone who opposes this one key issue, that will determine the long-term competitiveness of our great country more than any other. You will win or lose based on independents like me. And the vast majority of independent voters support a public option for healthcare.
EVANSTON , IL
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