Following is a short summary of recent polls after passage of the Main Street USA Health Care Rights Bill (taken from reports published by the Christian Science Monitor) and, of course, some commentary.
Washington Post poll: Some 55 percent of Americans expect their own costs for healthcare to be higher because of the reforms, and 60 percent say the nation's overall health tab will rise.
Rasmussen Reports: 49 percent said they think the quality of care will be adversely affected.
Washington Post Poll: Nearly half of Americans say the law "creates too much government involvement in the nation's health care system."
USA Today/Gallup Poll: 65 percent said the law "will expand government's role in health care too much."
Rasmussen Reports: Americans favor repeal of the Health Care reform by a 54-to-42 margin.
So, on the whole, this action by Congress and the White House is not what is needed and wanted by Main Street USA.
However, it is interesting to note that Main Street USA seems to feel that erosion of our rights by the government is okay with them.
In a Newsweek Poll a strong 59 percent surveyed felt that they were "open to a mandate on individuals to buy coverage" (with government subsidies available) if they are currently uninsured. In a similar poll by CNN/Opinion Research, 45 percent favored this action.
A Mandate to Buy Coverage?
Certainly no one I know falls into the above category. Allowing our elected representatives on Capitol Hill the power to fine someone for not exercising a supposed right to have something, while they have everything they need served to them on a silver platter (courtesy of the taxpayer), is frightening. (Please read previous post, March 23, 2010, The Concept of Rights.)
Main Street One warned that allowing our government the authority to fine taxpayers via the IRS for not exercising what is being defined as our Health Care Right will surely open the door to fines being levied for not exercising other rights, perhaps even those guaranteed in the Bill of Rights.
This is dangerous territory, America!
Attesting to how rhetoric can skew polls (for either side), a USA Today/Gallup showed 51 percent of Americans saying the law doesn't go far enough in regulating health insurers.
This may be true.
Unfortunately, the legislation is so cumbersome that it may take some time to see how far anything and everything reaches in this bill.
Needless to say, Democrats made the insurance company out to be the bad guy and succeeeded to a remarkable degree.
Many folks, however, feel that ambulance chasing attorneys (and their cousins in the field) earning millions upon millions upon millions by being allowed to extract outrageous amounts in punitive damages and, thus, increasing all forms of insurance, as some of the truly basic culprits.
Yet, those voting in the majority on this colossal package turn a deaf ear when Tort Reform is mentioned, brushing it aside as if it were merely a petty annoyance.
And those same members decided, as part of Health Care Reform, that the government should take over student loans and not allow banks and financial institutions to partake in this activity.
Excuse me. What on Earth do student loans have to do with Health Care?
Wake up Main Street USA.
The amount of pork and the number of earmarks on this one piece of legislation is probably unfathomable.
Why is it that people that WE elect think that they know what is best for all of us despite the fact that the majority of us did not want, do not want, our Health Care Right in the manner and in the form in which it was signed.
We do want and need reform.
We do not want and do not need THIS reform.
Especially at this cost, both in dollars and the further erosion of our civil liberties.
Over For Now.
Main Street One
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