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Urgent Call to Action: Contact Blue Dogs on 11/5 or 11/06

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A Second Open Letter to The Blue Dog Coalition

November 4, 2009

Dear Member of the Congressional Blue Dog Coalition:

Angry constituents this past summer made it clear to Members of Congress that HR 3200 was too expensive, too intrusive, too impractical -- and was being rushed too quickly through the House for Members and their constituents to comprehend the intended and unintended consequences of this bill on our health care system and our faltering economy.

We at Doctors on Strike for Freedom in Medicine were among those angry constituents at Tea Parties, Town Hall Meetings, and internet discussion forums. We are a grassroots coalition of patients, doctors, and business owners founded on July 4, 2009 to encourage health care reforms that preserve, protect, and promote individual rights and freedom in health care.

Launched four months ago on July 4th, our website has been visited by 9505 times by 7921 people from 2481 cities in 79 countries around the world, including all 50 states in America. Our message is getting through to Blue Dog constituents who rightly expect you to safeguard the rights of patients, doctors, and business owners from any governmental intrusion during the health care reform process.

Over 600 people have thus far signed our recently posted “Petition to Protect Doctor and Patient Rights” to get Congress to vote against any legislation that provides for any:

--Public plan option,

--Mandates that force individuals to buy insurance coverage,

--Mandates that force employers to provide insurance coverage,

--Surcharges that force some groups to pay for the healthcare of other groups, and

--Provisions that might allow HHS to force doctors to participate in public plans.

About 97% of the petitioners have responded “Yes” to the question: “Should doctors ‘go on strike’ by refusing to participate in any new government-run healthcare plan?”

Another 86% of the petitioners have responded “Yes” to the question: “If ObamaCare is approved, should doctors ‘go on strike’ by stopping their participation in other government-run healthcare plans (Medicare, Medicaid, TRICARE, SCHIP)?”

(We invite you to read and sign this petition at http://www.doctorsonstrike.com/petitiontop...entrights.html).

We are now urging you to oppose HR 3962: “The Affordable Health Care for America Act” because this 1,990-page behemoth is -- like HR 3200 -- too expensive, too intrusive, too impractical, and is again being rammed down our throats.

We ask that you vote against HR 3962 because it contains so many poisonous provisions -- ones that are patently immoral, arguably unconstitutional, fiscally irresponsible, demonstrably ineffective, and, as recent polls show, politically unpopular.

If you do not find these arguments against HR 3962 persuasive, we would appeal to your political self-interest before you vote on HR 3962 and whatever health care reform bill might eventually emerge from both Houses of Congress.

Think about how many different groups of likely voters will be hurt by HR 3962: seniors (due to Medicare cuts), the young and healthy (due to individual mandates), doctors (due to government intrusion into decision-making and reduced Medicare payments), small businesses (due to mandated insurance for employees and the surcharge on wealthy business owners), the wealthy (due to the surcharge on millionaires), medical device manufacturers (due to increased taxes), and -- last but not least -- the millions of health care policy holders who would have to pay significantly higher premiums (due to taxes on insurance, costly mandated coverage by HHS, and shrinking risk pools).

Think about the possibility that these voters would be so hurt by HR 3962 that Republicans, Libertarians, and Ross Perot-style Independents could easily mobilize them to vote many incumbent Democrats out of office in 2010 and 2012.

Think about the electoral consequences of forcing Americans to buy expensive health insurance while they learn that Congress has failed to address the root causes of rising health care costs.

Think about how -- as our economy continues to falter in 2010 and beyond -- the 2009 Tea Parties and Town Hall Meetings would be dwarfed by a rapidly spreading, Dresden-like firestorm of popular resistance to any more federal intrusion into our lives.

Think about how HR 3962 would be a prescription for economic, health care, and electoral disaster: Surely, a bad bill would be worse than no bill, not only for our economy and our health care system, but also for your political career.

Finally, think about this: A Blue Dog voting for HR 3962 might very well be committing an unnecessary, career-ending act of political suicide.

Dr. Gregory Garamoni

Doctors on Strike for Freedom

http://www.doctorsonstrike.com

P.S. We are encouraging patients, doctors, and business owners from all over America to call, email, or fax the Blue Dogs to urge them to reform healthcare in a fiscally and ethically responsible manner that fully respects the rights of doctors and patients to make healthcare decisions without any government interference. To this end, we have compiled a list of the Washington phone numbers along with a complete list of the Washington and District fax numbers for all 52 members of the Blue Dog Coalition (http://www.doctorsonstrike.com/bluedogcoalition.html)

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I decided to send a "follow-up" to my rep:

Dear Mr. [XXX],

As an immigrant citizen, I left my home country to get away from the nanny state. Your support for further socializing our health-care system is wrong.

I'm an independent voter who voted for you because [YYY] was against a woman's right to choose. However, I now figure that the President will be able to set the SCOTUS to be pro-choice, reducing that danger.

Therefore, if healthcare reform passes, I will almost certainly vote Republican next time.

It is sad that both parties are simply lobbies who try to take a different set of rights away from us citizens.

With slight changes, I sent the same thing to my Senators.

It's really simple. Just click here. Enter your Zip Code and key in a really short message. Even a simple "Please do NOT vote to socialize healthcare" in the subject and body, with nothing else will be good enough, since most politicians treat such feedback mostly like a poll of Yeas and nays.

Edited by softwareNerd
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  • 1 month later...

It's now being reported that the Democrats have gathered the necessary 60 votes in the Senate to pass their healthcare bill. Nobody other than Harry Reid knows for sure what's in the bill, but it will be passed anyhow. Socialized healthcare will be a complete fiscal, moral, and life-destroying disaster for America. This is what we get for years of embracing bad philosophy and voting for jackasses who are happy to put that philosophy into action.

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Have they actually settled on a finalized version of the bill now? I've been waiting until that was done to try to write in and harass my senators about how shameful they are and how they can count on not getting my votes if they vote for socializing health care. I figure if I wrote in before they settled on what the bill was, I'd get just an automatic reply of how they are still working out the details to make the bill do the impossible and magically sprout rainbows and sunshine over all (except maybe the evil rich people) and pull off spontaneous generation of values like medical supplies and services without having to up costs for all these extra uses of stuff that will go on while lacking as much incentive to try to compete to lower prices and innovate to make cheaper ways of doing things and such.

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