Response to Delegate Todd Schuler on Obamacare

Here is a post by Delegate Todd Schuler concerning Obama on 11 AUG 09. I will post my e-mail reply below it."I think it is important during this often heated debate about our health care crisis to take a step back from the rhetoric, the name calling and the labeling, and to look at the facts on the ground. There are two crises facing America with regard to health care.First, 45 million Americans have no insurance. Second, the cost of health insurance for those of us who have it has doubled in the last ten years.The 45 million uninsured Americans is just a part of the problem. No doubt, these are the Americans who have it really bad. They represent roughly one in six of us. They are the Americans who live with the fear that they or even their children cannot get cancer treatment should they need it, or control diabetes through medication should the need arise.The second group is the rest of us. Our health cost has doubled in the last 10 years. The small businesses for which we work, crippled by balance sheets loaded with health care costs, have faced tough choices including layoffs and reduced health benefits. Health costs as a part of labor costs have motivated large companies to move jobs overseas where such costs are cheaper. And the self employed are having a harder and harder time making ends meet. Our benefits are shrinking and they are costing more.What’s worse is that the two problems are fueling each other. Layoffs move some of us from the insured category into the uninsured category. And the uninsured, not simply willing to die in the streets, go through some of the most expensive and inefficient means to obtain health care, such as emergency room care. This cost is passed on to those of us with insurance through increased hospital cost. And the cycle repeats itself.To put it simply, our system is broken. It needs to be fixed. It needs to be more efficient. It needs to cost less. It needs to be available to all Americans. To simply maintain the status quo is unacceptable. Maintaining the status quo is as unacceptable now, as it was as far back as when Harry Truman tried to make health care available to all Americans in the post-war era.The question is not "Do we need health care reform?", the question is "How do we reform the health care system to make it less expensive for everyone, and available to all of us?". Too many right-wing talking heads, Congressional Republicans and town hall protesters are answering the first question. But President Obama is asking the second question. And he is asking everyone, of all political stripes to be a part of the answer. And he knows that to get the best solution, the best reform, he needs to get everyone’s ideas involved. We need conservative voices, liberal voices, budget hawks, bleeding hearts, insurance industry representatives, health care providers, senior citizen groups, labor, big business, and everyday ordinary tax paying Americans. We need everyone in the room with the singular purpose of making our health care system less expensive for everyone and available to all of us.What we don’t need is for political opportunists to use this debate as an opportunity to drive a wedge into the American people. What we do not need is petty name calling, labeling and fear-mongering. What we do not need are lies an innuendo. What we do not need is the seething partisan anger that would rather see a President fail than a Country succeed."

Dear Delegate Schuler,

I would like to comment on your unilateral health care "debate" in the spirit of getting "everyone in the room", a bipartisan philosophy you claim to espouse. You talk about rhetoric, name calling, and labeling, yet you make no mention of what the rhetoric is, what names are being called, who's doing it (although insinuated), and why those opposing viewpoints are invalid. You simply state it. For that matter, are they "facts" because you present them in a rather non-scientific manner with no defined or expounded thesis?

Let's begin with 45 million Americans who have no insurance. The first facts to sort out before any singular purpose can be gleaned is the actual number of uninsured. It's not 45 million, and it's not zero. 12 million-and-counting illegals should not be included in that number for the purpose of beefing them up nor as a way to usher an amnesty agenda through the back door. American citizens shouldn't have to pay for that and we won't. Senator Cardin even stated that this health care bill would not cover illegals and that he didn't want it to. So why 45 million? Why not 33 million or less? Rhetoric?

What about the Americans who are at low risk, don't want insurance, or would rather pay as they go? Take those out of the mix as well. Whether or not we will all agree on the exact final number is questionable, but at least be genuine about it. You've smoke screened us right out of the starting gate. What about the "inconvenient truths" of illegals bankrupting hospitals and clinics, and the stifling costs of ambulance chasing and exorbitant malpractice premiums for boundless punitive damages?

The folks who really need the Healthcare are the elderly (70%) and chronically ill (25%). The elderly have paid it forward for previous generations as we have paid it forward for their care. What rhetoric scares us is that of Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel who advocates rationing of health care, which is triage at a national level at best and Dr. Josef Mengele determination of fitness at worst. Nobody begrudges Congress for the health care they receive, including the moribund Senator Ted Kennedy, we just don't appreciate another example of perpetual hypocrisy where an elite Congress votes on something that doesn't directly affect them and expect us to swallow this as equitable.

I don't want this put so simply that this is a "broken system...that needs to be fixed...more efficient...cost less...available". The term reform is defined about as well as the term middle class. These are nebulous buzz terms. Fixed how? More efficient how? Cost less how? Available how? Simple terms doesn't mean an absence of terms. "The force can have a strong influence on the weak minded," but your old Jedi mind tricks won't work on us. You demonize the tea partiers and dismiss the town hallers as fringe, but we are those disgruntled, everyday ordinary taxpaying Americans. You, President Obama, and others claim you want us (all political stripes including conservatives, budget hawks, etc.) in the room with you, but then snub us in the room as outliers.
We have a right to be afraid based on the educated assessments we make as conservative intellectuals. Rational and discerning thought is not the sole bastion of liberal academia, Hollywood, Main Stream Media, or Democrats. I know; I used to be one. You seem to think we can't sort through all this and come to logical conclusions on our own without your cognitive assistance. We have the right to place labels with justification, especially when it comes directly out of the mouths (or pens) of liberals without being told we're "taking it out of context", another distracter expression that's conveniently never substantiated. Thinking that conservative pundits are brainwashing us and that we are mouthpieces for them, although this can be the case for some, instead of realizing that they are mouthpieces for us, will be the undoing of the Democrats in 2010. You are alienating Republicans, Democrats, and Independents alike, and the condescending tone of your writing style and historically hypocritical content illustrate this Democratic domain perfectly.

But why should health care town hall meetings be any different? Whatever Democrats believe is a foregone, indisputable conclusion, whether it's global warming, WMDs in Iraq, abortion, etc. The alternative viewpoint is "unacceptable" in your terms. You drive that "wedge" when you castigate those representing the opposing hypotheses as driven by lies and innuendo (again not substantiated). Seething partisan anger? I've seen rather calm, respectful, dissenting Americans at tea parties and town halls ostracized, silenced, and dismissed by your party (Barney Frank is a good and recent example), and worse, threatened or beaten by SEIU and union thugs.

I thought Hillary said "dissent IS patriotic?" I thought Code Pink and other Soros and Democrat surrogates were far less respectful of Bush and Republicans. Different rules apply when it's dissent of Obama's policies? What about what was said concerning the military? John Kerry called us uneducated, goose-stepping, grunt automatons "Stuck in Iraq". Murtha et al. condemned Marines at Haditha without the facts but failed to apologize with the same vigor when the Marines were exonerated. Recently, Janet Napolitano even warned of the potential for veterans to become domestic terrorists. President Obama still did not sign Senate Resolution 636 acknowledging the overwhelming successes of the Surge, GEN David Petraeus, and the military in Iraq. Where were you when this hemorrhagic diarrhea was aimed explosively at the military? Where are all those who claimed to "support the troops but not the war" when it comes to the Freedom Concerts for the Freedom Alliance or anything like that? I know now...you were more concerned about "seething partisan anger that would rather see a President (Bush) fail than a country succeed." I was boots-on-the-ground with an Embedded Provincial Reconstruction Team in Babil Province Iraq in 2007. I also have almost eight years working in chemical and biological defense with the Army, so please don't pontificate on things that are not your purview. We call it "staying in your lane".

Some people feel like this is a socialist agenda, even wealth redistribution, but I believe it goes deeper than that - insidious reparations. The government has stuck its nose into banking, car industry, Wall Street, and now health care. Look no further than the VA to see how the government can screw up health care on a grand scale for people who ARE entitled to it. Where will this money come from, and will my health care options be cut because there's $900M in bailout money going to the Palestinians or because there's a non-indigenous minnow in California that may go extinct from irrigation systems?

I worked diligently for 14 years of post-high school education for my degrees - four in college, four in veterinary school, one in an internship at Mystic Aquarium, and five in a pharmacology Ph.D. (skin absorption of pesticides in amphibians with the EPA). I joined the Army after 9/11 and volunteered for Iraq with three children. My wife spent 10 years Navy enlisted, then finished college with those same three kids, and is now in her second year of law school. All Americans are entitled to those same OPPORTUNITIES if they work at it. They are NOT entitled to a commensurate lifestyle simply because they live here, citizens or not. The opportunities are the American dream, not a right to entitlements. I pay for preschool, two vehicles, a home, dance lessons for the kids, and wife's tuition working most of my weekend days in private practice, and I don't complain, except when I have to pay for someone else who doesn't work as hard as I do, and frankly, may not want to either. And what is their incentive to work harder? You and your messiah are just going to hand it to them.

Replies

Armyvet August 19, 2009 at 3:37pm

Dear Delegate Schuler,

I would like to comment on your unilateral health care "debate" in the spirit of getting "everyone in the room", a bipartisan philosophy you claim to espouse. You talk about rhetoric, name calling, and labeling, yet you make no mention of what the rhetoric is, what names are being called, who's doing it (although insinuated), and why those opposing viewpoints are invalid. You simply state it. For that matter, are they "facts" because you present them in a rather non-scientific manner with no defined or expounded thesis?

Let's begin with 45 million Americans who have no insurance. The first facts to sort out before any singular purpose can be gleaned is the actual number of uninsured. It's not 45 million, and it's not zero. 12 million-and-counting illegals should not be included in that number for the purpose of beefing them up nor as a way to usher an amnesty agenda through the back door. American citizens shouldn't have to pay for that and we won't. Senator Cardin even stated that this health care bill would not cover illegals and that he didn't want it to. So why 45 million? Why not 33 million or less? Rhetoric?

What about the Americans who are at low risk, don't want insurance, or would rather pay as they go? Take those out of the mix as well. Whether or not we will all agree on the exact final number is questionable, but at least be genuine about it. You've smoke screened us right out of the starting gate. What about the "inconvenient truths" of illegals bankrupting hospitals and clinics, and the stifling costs of ambulance chasing and exorbitant malpractice premiums for boundless punitive damages?

The folks who really need the Healthcare are the elderly (70%) and chronically ill (25%). The elderly have paid it forward for previous generations as we have paid it forward for their care. What rhetoric scares us is that of Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel who advocates rationing of health care, which is triage at a national level at best and Dr. Josef Mengele determination of fitness at worst. Nobody begrudges Congress for the health care they receive, including the moribund Senator Ted Kennedy, we just don't appreciate another example of perpetual hypocrisy where an elite Congress votes on something that doesn't directly affect them and expect us to swallow this as equitable.

I don't want this put so simply that this is a "broken system...that needs to be fixed...more efficient...cost less...available". The term reform is defined about as well as the term middle class. These are nebulous buzz terms. Fixed how? More efficient how? Cost less how? Available how? Simple terms doesn't mean an absence of terms. "The force can have a strong influence on the weak minded," but your old Jedi mind tricks won't work on us. You demonize the tea partiers and dismiss the town hallers as fringe, but we are those disgruntled, everyday ordinary taxpaying Americans. You, President Obama, and others claim you want us (all political stripes including conservatives, budget hawks, etc.) in the room with you, but then snub us in the room as outliers.
We have a right to be afraid based on the educated assessments we make as conservative intellectuals. Rational and discerning thought is not the sole bastion of liberal academia, Hollywood, Main Stream Media, or Democrats. I know; I used to be one. You seem to think we can't sort through all this and come to logical conclusions on our own without your cognitive assistance. We have the right to place labels with justification, especially when it comes directly out of the mouths (or pens) of liberals without being told we're "taking it out of context", another distracter expression that's conveniently never substantiated. Thinking that conservative pundits are brainwashing us and that we are mouthpieces for them, although this can be the case for some, instead of realizing that they are mouthpieces for us, will be the undoing of the Democrats in 2010. You are alienating Republicans, Democrats, and Independents alike, and the condescending tone of your writing style and historically hypocritical content illustrate this Democratic domain perfectly.

But why should health care town hall meetings be any different? Whatever Democrats believe is a foregone, indisputable conclusion, whether it's global warming, WMDs in Iraq, abortion, etc. The alternative viewpoint is "unacceptable" in your terms. You drive that "wedge" when you castigate those representing the opposing hypotheses as driven by lies and innuendo (again not substantiated). Seething partisan anger? I've seen rather calm, respectful, dissenting Americans at tea parties and town halls ostracized, silenced, and dismissed by your party (Barney Frank is a good and recent example), and worse, threatened or beaten by SEIU and union thugs.

I thought Hillary said "dissent IS patriotic?" I thought Code Pink and other Soros and Democrat surrogates were far less respectful of Bush and Republicans. Different rules apply when it's dissent of Obama's policies? What about what was said concerning the military? John Kerry called us uneducated, goose-stepping, grunt automatons "Stuck in Iraq". Murtha et al. condemned Marines at Haditha without the facts but failed to apologize with the same vigor when the Marines were exonerated. Recently, Janet Napolitano even warned of the potential for veterans to become domestic terrorists. President Obama still did not sign Senate Resolution 636 acknowledging the overwhelming successes of the Surge, GEN David Petraeus, and the military in Iraq. Where were you when this hemorrhagic diarrhea was aimed explosively at the military? Where are all those who claimed to "support the troops but not the war" when it comes to the Freedom Concerts for the Freedom Alliance or anything like that? I know now...you were more concerned about "seething partisan anger that would rather see a President (Bush) fail than a country succeed." I was boots-on-the-ground with an Embedded Provincial Reconstruction Team in Babil Province Iraq in 2007. I also have almost eight years working in chemical and biological defense with the Army, so please don't pontificate on things that are not your purview. We call it "staying in your lane".

Some people feel like this is a socialist agenda, even wealth redistribution, but I believe it goes deeper than that - insidious reparations. The government has stuck its nose into banking, car industry, Wall Street, and now health care. Look no further than the VA to see how the government can screw up health care on a grand scale for people who ARE entitled to it. Where will this money come from, and will my health care options be cut because there's $900M in bailout money going to the Palestinians or because there's a non-indigenous minnow in California that may go extinct from irrigation systems?

I worked diligently for 14 years of post-high school education for my degrees - four in college, four in veterinary school, one in an internship at Mystic Aquarium, and five in a pharmacology Ph.D. (skin absorption of pesticides in amphibians with the EPA). I joined the Army after 9/11 and volunteered for Iraq with three children. My wife spent 10 years Navy enlisted, then finished college with those same three kids, and is now in her second year of law school. All Americans are entitled to those same OPPORTUNITIES if they work at it. They are NOT entitled to a commensurate lifestyle simply because they live here, citizens or not. The opportunities are the American dream, not a right to entitlements. I pay for preschool, two vehicles, a home, dance lessons for the kids, and wife's tuition working most of my weekend days in private practice, and I don't complain, except when I have to pay for someone else who doesn't work as hard as I do, and frankly, may not want to either. And what is their incentive to work harder? You and your messiah are just going to hand it to them.

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