Don Lloyd: No actual cost reduction in health care bill

Congressional Democrats seem oblivious to the fact that nothing they are considering in the healthcare bill will accomplish anything toward actually reducing healthcare costs! Their plans focus entirely on bringing healthcare payments under Government control, while they work feverishly to mask the actual costs we, the taxpayers, will be forced to pay. Or in this case, accumulate massive debt for our kids to pay!

Even after receiving clear recommendations from the Republicans at President Obama’s “healthcare summit” that would actually address the cost drivers in healthcare, they ignore these and belligerently rush on to force their controls on the American people! Now Congressional leaders are working feverishly to bend the rules in such a way as to coerce the few principled Democrats opposing these actions into toeing the line to pass the bill.

All the while, claims of “reducing costs” continue to be voiced, as if they really think the American public can be duped into accepting their shell games. The biggest sham is their “pricing” obtained from the Congressional Budget Office for a carefully defined 10-year period in which taxes are increased from the start, but benefits are only paid in the last six years. Then Congress projects future costs at that “10-year average”, and voila… the costs go down! While realistically they will grow by the trillions!

Can they actually believe that a second Medicare-like system will be successful, while the present one is becoming insolvent? Can the American people, comprising the minority that supports this, actually desire such a fiasco?

Meanwhile, President Obama gives many speeches, promising numerous “freebies” and urging his Democrat-controlled Congress onward, while he can hardly wait to sign their healthcare monstrosities into law. These are our Liberal lawmakers, hard at work despoiling the healthcare system that could remain the envy of the world!

Don Lloyd
Boulder