Dear Mr. President,
It's January 20Th, 2011 and seeing & hearing the news, it doesn't seem to be getting any better for most of us, no matter what the polls seem to say.If you listen to Glenn Beck & Rush Limbaugh, you'd get the impression that the sky is falling and it's the end of the world. Conversely, if you listen to Ed Schultz, Thom Hartman and Randi Rhodes it'll be the end of the world if any conservatives have any power. I think that they're all wrong, If you look around, most Americans are pretty much middle of the road, they just want to work, take care of their families, pay their taxes( not too much. ) and have a bit left over to be able to get things that they want and not just what they need.
You once said that you'd like to see any good ideas that anybody had to help our Country( your first state of the union address?) & you didn't care who they came from, therefore,as a currently unemployed American with a lot of time on my hands ( even with the job hunt.) to think about things, I've decided to take you up on that.
The GOP won some victories in the last Election ( Congress, etc...) because the people apparently don't want to have any party left in total, unopposed power, they've already voted to repeal your health care bill, unfortunately, they don't seem to have any good ideas to replace it.
I understand that you ( and the Democrats.) passed the health care bill with only the best intentions at heart, unfortunately, the only people who seem to be benefiting from it are the insurance companies themselves, at increasingly larger cost( premiums, etc...) to the rest of us.
I've heard that health insurance companies are regulated individually state by state, thus ensuring that even though there are almost 1400 insurance companies nationwide, sometimes only a handful may do business in some states.
Most Countries that have some form of national or socialized health care have a few things that we don't have. price caps on medicine, medical equipment, and on medical (surgeries, medical tests, etc...) procedures. They also have (mostly) much smaller populations than we do.
My proposal is this;
1.) Take the current plan off the board.
2.) Set up a bipartisan panel to examine the regulations of all 50 states, take the best rules & make a federal standard into law, make the ins. companies comply with the new standard & open up business, Nationwide, to all of them.
3.) Set price caps on drugs, medical equipment and procedures. between this and the federal ins. standards, this would drive the health care (premiums, co pays, prescriptions, etc...) prices way down, making it affordable for almost everyone. Don't worry about the Insurance companies, with all of the sudden competition, they would have to give much better value for the price, otherwise, they'd fail if they didn't.
4.) leave the provisions for pre-existing conditions in place, otherwise, many people would be out of luck.
I hope that you are true to your word about wanting good ideas from everybody, regardless of political affiliation, I'm not a Democrat, however, I wish you the best of luck and I hope that you'll think about all of us in your work, no matter what you do. Have a nice day.
