Dear Mr. President:

Thank you so much for hosting the health care summit February 25, 2010. It was very informative. It clearly illustrated how out of touch you are with the American people and disproved any claim that you are not an ideologue.

I only need cite one example as proof. You agreed that the CBO stated health care premiums would increase for the average American. But you insisted this was a good thing because we would get better coverage for that increased premium. In fact, I believe you stated, in a patronizing manner, that we would be happy that our lousy coverage would be replaced by better coverage. This statement is not only incorrect, it is arrogant.

The stated purpose of health care reform is to reduce cost so that more Americans can be covered. And all polls show that 85% of Americans are happy with their health care. So how is it a good thing to increase cost for better coverage when the goal is to reduce costs and 85% of Americans that have health care are happy with their coverage?

I understand that I am not as smart as you are. But I think one of us does not understand the issue.

Further, you correctly stated that this is what elections are for. Elections do have consequences - often unintended. I did not vote for you because I studied your background and understood where you would take us. I tried to convince everyone I knew. But they voted for change. Unfortunately, the change you are bringing is an unintended consequence of the American people voting without research. I do not believe that will happen again. This is why you are a one term president.

Sincerely,

Wilke Renwick

They Just Don't Get It

I have been communicating with my Senators and Congressional Representative more than ever over the last year. The most common subject has been health care reform. It has been very interesting to see how little their responses have changed even as the opinion of the American people has changed dramatically over the course of the debate. As the American people have learned more and more about the health care reform proposed by the Democrat majority, the more they know they do not want it. Sure, we all know we need reform. But it is not a health care problem. We have the best health care in the world. The problem is access. We need to lower the cost and make health care more accessible to all Americans. But neither the House, nor the Senate bill address this. They are attempting to use a chain saw to fix what needs a scalpel.

Here is what I wrote to my Senators today. Since I live in Virginia, I wrote to Senators Webb and Warner. But you can substitute the name of any Democrat Senator, and virtually any Democrat Congressional Representative and the fit is perfect. If every American who believes the "leadership" in Washington is going the wrong direction communicates with their representatives two things can happen. They will listen and say no to the mess they call reform, or they will not listen and we will say no to them when they ask for our vote.

Senator Virgina Senator,

Thank you for your reply regarding the health care debate that is continuing on Capitol Hill. I understand you support the Senate plan rather than the House plan. However, you should know that the majority of your constituents, and the majority of Americans across the nation, do not support either plan. The reason is simple. Both plans are variants on a theme and the theme is an unashamed power grab by the elitists in Washington who believe that only they, and not the American people, have the intelligence, the common sense, and the right to decide how our nation is run.

Virginia Senator, you are wrong. You work for the people of Virginia. We are not unintelligent. We balance our check books and pay our bills, which is more than can be said about the Federal Government. And we are watching.

You need to do what is right for America. Congress needs to hit the reset button and take the health care debate back to square one. The President has continued to say that the Republican party is the party of NO and that the GOP has no ideas or vision. You know that is not true. What you do not seem to recognize is that the ideas proposed by the GOP have much greater chance of success than anything proposed by the Democrat majority.

What we need in health care reform is inter-state competition, true tort reform (tough one because the Democrats are beholden to the defense lawyers of America), a move away from employer based (legislated by big government) insurance by providing tax breaks for individuals so they can afford to purchase their own insurance (in the free marketplace with interstate competition) and tax incentives for health savings accounts so that individuals can save money for their basic health care and only need insurance for catastrophic care.

Analogies have been made between auto insurance and health insurance. Most of these to not hold up under close scrutiny. But as healthy competition between automobile insurers continues to bring down the cost and improve the coverage, so too could healthy competition between health insurers.

Virginia Senator, the Senate and House both have it all wrong. What we need is not Universal Health Care. What we need is not more big government intervention into our lives. What we need is a free market based system free from government intervention. This is what has made America the most prosperous country in the world over the last two hundred plus years, and it is the model being employed by the most successful emerging economies today. Failure to recognize this will not only doom your future in the Senate, it will also doom our great nation once and for all.

Wake up! Do the right thing! Stand up to the President and the Senate majority leader! Vote no on any health care plan currently under consideration! Hit the RESET button! Go back to square one! Our nation depends upon it.

Home Ownership RESET

I read an interesting article today in the Wall Street Journal entitled "Home Ownership Declines". I believe a more appropriate name for this article would be "Home Ownership Reset". The title that was chosen would be appropriate if home ownership had declined to unreasonable levels. But home ownership has, in fact, only been reset to reasonable levels.

This is similar to the President's idea of a spending "freeze". He promises to freeze spending, but that only means no further increases. The increases of an out of control Democrat Congress and administration are already in place, and so spending will be frozen at a level that is far from sustainable. He needs a reset button to make the freeze meaningful.

Similarly, home ownership has only declined from artificially inflated levels to more realistic levels. The Democrat controlled Congress and administration of the early '90s passed legislation to "encourage" lenders to make homes more affordable so that an increasing number of Americans could live the American Dream of home ownership. This "encouragement" was so compelling - translate "threatening" - that financial institutions made mortgages available to borrowers with no hope of paying them. Additionally, lenders became very creative with new mortgage instruments that would make it possible for even more Americans who could not afford homes to buy them. Adjustable rate (ARMS), interest only and no money down mortgages made home ownership seem possible for almost anybody with a pulse.

Unfortunately, this strategy backfired when the housing bubble burst and we experienced the recent housing crisis. What we had was a political and cultural crisis. Politicians made it seem possible for anybody to live the dream, and Americans used to buying everything from cars to cigarettes on credit dreamed big! As reality set in with the burst of the bubble, artificially inflated home prices dropped back to reasonable levels leaving many home "owners" under water in their mortgages. Many more could not continue to pay their mortgage payments at all as the bill continued to balloon when the rates adjusted.

As a result, those who really could not afford a home at all, and those with eyes bigger than their budget, lost their homes. Therefore we see the reported rate of home ownership decline. The truth is, home ownership rates have simply reset to a realistic and sustainable level.

See what happens when the government gets involved in the free market? Not only do individual citizens lose, but we also get a great news story out of it.