Here we go again on the health care merry-go-round

Dear Mr. Rumpt,

I am writing you today to express my concern that you and the rest of the nincompoops fooling around with the nation’s health care system are barking up the wrong tree once again.

First it was the loopy efforts of the New Conservative Neanderthal Party (NCNP) members in the house to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act and now it’s the NCNP senate members led by Mr. Stepped-in-Something-Bad Mitch McConnell who are making us a laughing stock of the civilized world with their sophomoric plan.

I will explain where we’re at once again in fairly simple terms with regards to our health care system.

I mean, really, Mr. Rumpt, even places like Mexico have a basic health care system that doesn’t leave citizens trying to stitch wounds themselves or set a broken leg on a pool table with a 2X4 and some duct tape. You don’t create a progressive, lasting health care system for 320 million people with a bunch of free market band-aids.

This not a political issue.

Mr. Snidely Whiplash, better known as Paul Ryan, once said the Affordable Care Act has ruined the American healthcare system.

I believe the American healthcare system has been on its own free market, unregulated evolutionary path of ruin for decades.

Vice president-elect Mike Pence also said the GOP will keep its promise to repeal Obamacare and replace it with a “market-based healthcare reform system,” through legislative and executive action. And you, Mr. Rumpt, tweeted that you want “a health care plan that really works—much less expensive and FAR BETTER!”

Sorry, Mr. Rumpt, that won’t happen unless we get realistic and regulate costs across the most expensive healthcare system in the world. The mantra of free market competition and individual choice won’t work to reduce costs and make the system affordable any more than the man on the moon will fix our roads or take care of our elderly.

The aims of the ACA were to make healthcare available and affordable to an uninsured segment of the population. The touchy subject of reducing cost was left with efforts aimed at slowing the ever-increasing cost of healthcare, not reversing it.

The NCNP, formerly the republicans, has been able to control the message and blame the ACA for rising premiums and deductibles since 2009 when in fact the rising costs are dictated by the market-based healthcare markets and providers. I repeat, healthcare and the ACA operate through non-profit and private healthcare insurance systems and providers. There are no government doctors or hospitals other than through the Veterans Administration or the Indian Health Service. This is not socialism, sir. The ACA and the government aren’t setting the premium costs, the marketplace is. It’s that simple. What the ACA and the government do provide are subsidies that allow working class Americans to be able to afford healthcare in the first place.

A market-based healthcare system is where we’re at right now. Our healthcare system has been decades in the making through a market-based system and we’ve ended up with the most expensive healthcare in the world. It’s a fool’s parade to believe more competition or health savings accounts (I already have one) or refundable tax credits will magically lower the costs of the most expensive healthcare in the developed world.

The NCNP has been able to distort the reality that a majority of Americans do support the ACA and its efforts to provide health care for a broad segment of the population. Since 2009-2010 the GOP has been able to distort that broad support by a little sleight of hand, dividing two camps of people: those who supported the aims of the act and those who opposed the measure because it didn’t go far enough. In other words, a majority of Americans supported some kind of progressive health care reform.

Mr. Rumpt, please understand that you guys are just plain mean when it comes to health care. Not nice. You and the rest of the nincompoops are a bunch of meanies taking health care away from people, not providing it.

Awaiting your response.

Yours truly,

Forrest Johnson

P.S. I’m sorry but you guys are just plain mean. Not nice.