To the Editor:
"Leaving Millions on the Table" and "Making Care Affordable" in this week’s Connection [July 19-25, 2012] do not include important facts about government-controlled healthcare.
As to Virginia expanding Medicaid to get increased federal funding, the U.S. government has already run out of "other people’s money" with its nearly $16 trillion debt that is growing daily. The CBO has raised the cost estimate for the Affordable Care Act to $1.76 trillion over ten years, but that is only the opening bid as more and more people lose their job-based coverage and flood into taxpayer-subsidized insurance. At this rate, the cost will be $2 trillion, not the less than $1 trillion President Obama promised. When the financial crisis that is now impacting Greece and Spain hits our country, the consequences will be far direr than theirs because of the size of America’s economy.
Plus, the federal government will be dumping more Medicaid funding onto the states over time according to a July 19 Forbes piece "Governors' Worst Nightmare: Obama Proposed Shifting Costs of Obamacare's Medicaid Expansion to the States." During the "supercommittee" deficit-reduction talks last year, President Obama proposed reducing federal funding for the Medicaid expansion by $100 billion over ten years, with states picking up the difference. Virginians can’t afford this.
In addition, Medicaid condemns those in the program to long waits in emergency rooms to get even routine care. Plus, it pays doctors so little and requires so much paperwork that few can afford to see more than a few Medicaid patients.
As to the "Making Care Affordable" Letter to the Editor, most Americans are not in favor of the Affordable Care Act as the writer asserts. According to a New York Times/CBS News poll on Obamacare following the Supreme Court decision, opposition to the law is virtually unchanged from when it was enacted in 2010, with about half disapproving and one-third supporting the law. Support for repeal remains strong: 61 percent of those polled say they want Congress to repeal the individual mandate (27 percent) or the entire law (34 percent). Only 15 percent want to keep the law as it is.
It is time to repeal the government-centered Obamacare and replace it with patient-focused, free-market solutions. Therefore, we must vote out ardent Congressional supporters of the law such as Gerry Connolly and replace them with those who promote freedom like Col. Chris Perkins.
Susan Lider
Clifton