Keep your doc, ditch Wall Street

Letter to the editor, Concord (N.H.) Monitor   
January 11, 2010

Republican strategist Bob Luntz wrote it's not what you say but what people hear. He was correct. I keep hearing the phrase, "government-run health care," which is purposely vague and undefined. However, it frightens people who think that they will be forced to leave their current doctor and report to a dull gray building where they will receive poor treatment from a government doctor who graduated at the bottom of the class.

There is no bill proposing this. There is, however, a bill that addresses America's health care issues at a price we can afford, individually and as a nation. It provides universal full health care coverage for all medically necessary treatment, mental health, vision, prescription drugs, long-term care, dental, substance abuse and other services, and it pays your doctor fairly. A poll by the New Hampshire Medical Society found that over 80 percent of primary care physicians favor such a bill. However, Congress is not even actively considering the bill, the United States National Health Care Act, H.R. 676, although it is significantly cheaper and provides far greater benefits than what is being proposed. Proposed instead is a bill favorable not to you but to the Wall Street-owned corporations who pay our legislators to continue using these corporations to process the payments for health care.

Contact your legislators, have them fairly evaluate H.R. 676, which covers everyone, is affordable, comprehensive and sustainable. Keep your doctor, ditch Wall Street. Speak up or suffer for generations to come.

JOHN R. SWARTZ
Wilmot

http://www.concordmonitor.com/article/20100111/OPINION/1110334