I very much enjoyed your unhumorous analysis of the House Health Bill, which I think should make most of us quite sick while significantly increasing our health costs. The real question is, “how much will our health costs actually go up?”

When the present Health Insurance Companies have to comply with the newly mandated requirements (take people with preexisting conditions, etc.), their premiums will be increased to cover these additional exposures. The only question is how much, which our Representatives have conveniently overlooked.

Tort reform is a must, if we are truly serious about reducing health care expenses. There must be some country that has successful attacked this legal abuse problem. Perhaps, we could use that country’s program as a model, if we can’t figure this out on our own. Maybe the Democrats, strongly supported by attorneys, don’t actually want to solve this expensive problem.

I don’t know where the cuts will come in Medicare or how transfering more Medcaid costs to the states will reduce our expenses. However, it sounds like the old “shell game” to me. As for Medicare fraud, why isn’t our government agressively pursuing this right now? We don’t need a new law to go after fraud. Perhaps, after real tort reform, they could hire those plantiff attorneys who lose their jobs, if there aren’t enough attorneys.

Increasing the taxes on the rich always sounds good, at least politically, however these are the very people who own businesses and are professional people. What do you thinks they will do when their taxes are increased? It’s my guess that they’ll pass that tax right on to their customers – that would be you and me.

Hopefully our Seantors will be a lot more honest with us regarding ALL of the real costs of their Health Care Reform Bill. In light of our present recession, which is far from over, I don’t feel that it is prudent nor responsible for our government to pass more costs on to the middle class, who are still bailing out our financial institutions that our government failed to properly regulate, but that’s another sad story.

Tom Ayres

Not that a gov’t beaurocrat is an honest person, however, we need to wake up and realize that big businesses are just as greedy and corrupt. As are mid-sized local businesses. Such as all the doctors that work for the same local network (I won’t mention any names, but I live in Dover), that have sent my wife for the same tests numerous times (CT scans, xrays, MRIs, etc) and of course always come up short of a result from the test. However, I still incur the bills. Yes my insurance company pays for 80% of it, and as the years go on my premiums go up by a lot each year.

I also love how after spending money on repeated (literally) tests, procedures, and general stabs in the dark, they all seem to a) not share information or communication with each other, b) not share test results, and c) always fall back on “pushing” drugs on her. Unrelated ones like anti-depressants, antacids, and dangerous pain killers. Hmmm… i reckon they must make commission from the drug companies for selling these.

Now… how does an anti-depressant help a non-depressed person with a neck injury? Well it doesn’t.. but it sure helps pay for gas to fuel the doctor’s mercedes. Ahh yes the honesty and integrity of big business. It trickles down to the smaller local businesses.