To the Editor:
Unless something very surprising and significant happens in the next week, the Senate health care bill, and likely the entire health care reform effort, can only be termed a colossal failure. Addresses rising costs? Nope. Expands choice? Nope. Holds insurers accountable? Nope. Expands access? Yes, because more money needs to be funneled to insurance companies somehow!
Despite holding both the White House and an overwhelming majority in both houses—a situation that comes along once every few decades—the Democrats have again failed miserably.
Health reform turns out to be a gift for insurers and a knife in the backs of the American people. How embarrassing for President Obama and Senator Harry Reid, and how depressing for the rest of us.
Chad Friesen
Brooklyn, Dec. 18, 2009
Note from KBJ: Does anyone else sense that the most important thing to many progressives is harming insurance companies? I don't get it. Whence the animosity? Is it the very idea of insurance, which is merely the spreading of risk, or is it thought that insurance companies are earning too much profit? If the latter, who decides how much profit is too much? Does Chad Friesen decide? If so, on what basis? Do I get to decide whether Chad Friesen earns too much?
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 