Here is her response - my second letter will follow...
----- SNIP -----
Dear Mr. Kelley:
Thank you for contacting me to express your concerns about the health insurance reform bills that passed the House with my support on March 21st. While the bills aren't perfect, I strongly believe that the status quo was unsustainable and that change will be beneficial.
In the past ten years, Americans with insurance provided by their employers saw premiums more than double. Small business premiums increased by 129%, and the cost of providing health care for the uninsured rose to over $100 billion annually. Without action, these costs would continue to skyrocket, burdening individuals and families, businesses, and the government.
The health insurance reform bills passed by Congress will make health insurance affordable for middle class families and small businesses, hold insurance companies accountable for the quality of their coverage, and increase competition. According to the independent Congressional Budget Office, this reform effort will also reduce the deficit by $143 billion over the next ten years, and $1.2 trillion in 20 years, while significantly controlling waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicare.
Locally, this legislation will provide eligibility for the 43,000 residents of my district that are currently uninsured, will allow 55,000 young adults to remain on their parents' coverage during these difficult economic times, and will help nearly 15,000 small businesses provide coverage to their employees. Moreover, 11,200 residents in the 16th District with pre-existing conditions will be able to obtain insurance coverage; 71,000 Medicare beneficiaries will benefit from program improvements, including the closing of the donut hole; and will protect 800 families from being bankrupted by crushing health care costs.
Though we may not agree entirely on this issue, I do appreciate hearing your opinion. I have heard, also, from a very large number of constituents who urged support for this bill. This recent reform effort was only one part of our continuing efforts to improve health care for Americans, and I encourage you to stay engaged in the debate as we monitor the implementation of these reforms and look at other ways to enact meaningful changes.
Again, thank you for contacting me. Please feel to contact me regarding this or any other matter of importance to you or your family.
SincerelyZoe Lofgren
Member of Congress
----- SNIP -----(Representative Lofgren: Just on the off chance you end up reading this blog - ! - you're probably going to wonder why I do this. So, I'll tell you here.
(While I've long said that there is no public "Right to know," and that I have long defied anyone to prove me wrong in the entire body of American Law, there are some things that the people deserve to know. For instance, they deserve to know what their representatives are up to, and it seems that there's a good deal going on in Washington that gets kept under wraps - "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!" - until it has the force of Law.
(The people deserve to know what their - and other! - representatives are thinking. We sent you there to do a job, and we deserve to know how you are doing that job. This is how we decide on our performance reviews - and whether or not you will continue to have a job...
(Thank you.)
And now, my return post. If she answers again, I'll be sure to let everyone know.
----- SNIP -----
Representative Lofgren -
I would like to take a moment to thank you for at least replying to my message (email of 27APR2010) - as it is certainly more than I'd gotten from Representative Pelosi, or Senators Feinstein or Boxer!
I am not now, nor was I ever, arguing that the current helathcare financial model was sustainable in the long term. My primary issue was that the problem we now face had grown by accretion over the last 20-30 years (I can remember when an hour in the doctor's office, with a full physical, cost about what a /copay/ does currently!) and a sweeping fix was the wrong approach.
All I was trying to do was to get people to slow down; identify facets of the problem, prioritise, and then repair them in priority order. Repairing facets of the problem would probably have been ultimately more productive, since it often happens that correcting a core issue will tangentially correct a number of issues at the surface as well (as any medical practitioner - who picked the career for the /right/ /reason/ - could tell you.)
I was also hoping to open discussion between Washington and the constituency on this issue, and perhaps help you to get more information on what the problem actually was /from/ /people/ /who/ /deal/ /with/ /the/ /system/ /regularly/, and not from "consultants" who haven't had to worry about "regular" healthcare coverage for the last 15-20 years.
Have premiums gone up? Certainly.
Have copays gone up? Yep.
Have costs gone up? Yah, but;
- The cost of an office visit has gone up, I am sure, in response to economic factors, fighting with the coverage companies to get paid, and the increase in Federal overhead and oversight (not to mention the increase in malpractise lawsuits. I know a /psychologist/ - not allowed to actually prescribe anything - who must carry malpractise insurance to the tune of $250k/year in premiums. Again, this man may not prescribe /any/ medication, nor may he /issue/ any medication in his office.)
- The increased cost of DME (Durable Medical Equipement) would be due to the increase in costs of materials more than anything else (China keeps buying up our scrap metal. Good news for the scrap vendors - but Chinese metallurgy just isn't up to scratch.)
- I'm not sure what has caused the increased cost of diagnostic equipment (chemical analysers, CT, MRI, X-Ray,) but much of that is just the same as it was fifty years ago. Maybe finer resolution, and maybe more sensitive reagents used for chemical tests, but chemical tests, I know, aren't terribly different from the ones I learned when I took Organic Chemistry - twenty-five years ago.
- Increased pharmaceutical costs? Herein lies much of the problem! I used to shoot rifles (informally) with a couple of research chemists at Roche Pharmaceuticals - and I know they don't make that much money. I can't see the materials for R&D or production costing anywhere near as much as they're made out to. Where does it all go? And, as if developing a new drug doesn't have an excessive price tag (primarily due to FDA oversight and over-regulation,) why does the /entire/ process need to be repeated to make a generic copy of the drug when it goes off-patent? Why is it that Canada can bring the costs of drugs down, but we can't?
As I said before (and shall continue to tell anyone who will listen!) this is a problem that has grown incrementally, through accretion. It isn't something that can be solved at one fell swoop - except, possibly, by setting up to scrap the system and starting over with a clean sheet of paper (write the new system beforehand, then set a transition period and a drop-dead date for compliance.)
If a total rewrite isn't going to be done, then an incremental solution is /necessary/ (note my previous comment regarding solutions to medical problems. As a mechanic and general repairman, I have also seen this same principal at work in various appliances and vehicles.) Speaking as someone who has family that isn't covered by anything (pre-extant condition: post-surgical complications due to having had a calcified meningioma removed several years ago...) I am certainly not going to argue that reform isn't needed! However, I can't help but think that we've made things eventually worse, rather than better.
A final question - how much of the bill had you - personally - read and understood before you voted on it? Every time I tried to read through it, a new version was passed and I had to dig it up and download it - and there were often times I would wonder, "Where did THAT come from?" when I read something. A bill that reads /two/ /thousand/ /pages/ in pretty much any version is entirely too long to be an effective fix to /anything/ - and is worrisome in and of itself. If you were asked, would you be able to explain sections or provisions of the bill offhand, or even to be able to produce, say, a fifty-page summary that any of your constituents could read? Part of me doubts that /anyone/ in Washington - from the newest freshman legislator to President Obama himself - would be able to do so. This is also something that worries me...
Jon D. Kelley
San Jose, CA
----- SNIP -----
Here's hoping that we can get these people to start thinking again, hm?
(And no, I'm not blanking out any names - not even my own. If you've gotten here, you know my name already. I'm probably on so many Federal watchlists by now - just for trying to keep these people honest - that they know who I am. Hell, I was once escorted off of the tarmac at SJC while trying to work on a GPU because President Clinton was landing, and the USSS recognised me and I was on their watchlist. Why? Because I wrote letters disagreeing with Clinton's policies - and he probably put me there. I don't know how, specifically, I ended up on the list - but it did screw up my trying to get that damned GPU working...
(So, I'm going to continue to name names. Why? Because that's just the kind of guy I am. Deal.)
