Get Off The Couch!

by Gordon Cooper

From Broader View Weekly, August 14, 2009

The blessing of living in this technically advanced era is the ability we have to access many sources of information at the mere click of a mouse. We also have news outlets available to us at any time of the day or night. These opportunities were denied all previous generations in our nation’s history. You would think, therefore, that we would have the most informed and well-educated citizenry to have ever lounged on the couches of our fair nation. Sadly, that is not the case. I am sorry to say that we (Note that I am speaking in first-person plural here, I include myself in this indictment) all too often sit back and allow others to do the heavy lifting for us. We sit back in our easy chairs and bovinely chew our cud and burp out the pre-digested “facts” that others have sought out and delivered to us in soft, chewy morsels.

It is my intent today to inspire you to get up off the couch, go to your computer or to your library’s computer, and do some heavy lifting. Exercise your brain and, in so doing, I hope you will be inspired to exercise your DUTY as a citizen to become an informed and active part of the decision-making process within our nation. I will not be telling you what to think, I will not be telling you what questions to ask of your representatives; I will be, however, exposing you to some of the details that I have found in some heavy lifting of my own. But do not expect me to pre-digest these facts for you. That would be an insult to your intelligence and it would deny you the pleasure of chewing these morsels for yourself.
So, it is with the above intent that I bring to you some details about the proposed legislation that our leaders have told us we need.

First of all, the document is available for download at the house website www.house.gov or through other private sites such as www.docstoc.com. I would recommend that each of you take the time to download it – although, for the sake of our forests, I would not recommend printing the whole 1,000-plus pages.

If you take my advice, what facts may you uncover?

Well, you may discover that hidden within this bill that many of our own representatives have still yet to read is the following:
On page 30, line 132 and following, you will read of the establishment of a government committee that will, figuratively, be brought into every exam room of every doctor’s office and hospital. This committee will be active in determining the treatments and benefits available to you and the compensation your doctor or hospital receives.

If you are okay with sharing your private financial information with an unknown and unknowable number of government employees, you will find no problem with the stipulations carried on pages 57-60 where this legislation mandates that the above named committee shall have access to your private (well it used to be private, anyway) bank accounts to determine your ability to pay for medical procedures once you receive a government issued healthcare card. It is cloaked, however, in words that say it is to determine which programs and assistance you may qualify for.

Page 121 lays out in terms that even a weak reader like me can understand that the secretary of this committee shall have the power to set payment rates for all services and procedures. This practice in other nations has led to the emigration of the most qualified doctors from their shores to ours as they realize that price-fixing takes away their incentive and limits their ability to provide the best treatments for their patients. The inevitable result will be a shortage of qualified men and women entering the medical field. This concern was voiced to me personally by an emergency room physician from Arnot Ogden Hospital.

I could go on and on, but that would actually go against the purpose of this column. I want to just pique your interest enough to inspire you to do as I did – read it! I admit that I did not read the whole bill in detail; however, I did do the good work of checking the validity of those who have written about the bill by reading the sections they mentioned.

Remember the Biblical adage that states: “To whom much is given, much shall be required.” (Luke 12:48 paraphrase). We have been given a great amount of freedom in this nation; therefore much vigilance is required of us to maintain that freedom. That maintenance requires us to get off our couches and do some heavy lifting. If you read things in this bill or others that concern you, print up those particular sections of the bill and take your concerns to your elected representative when she or he comes to your town hall. Get off the couch!