Dear President Obama...

Dear Barack,

I hate your "universal health care plan," and I hope it never ever passes. I just wanted you to know that.

With disdain,

Becca

Oh and P.S. When you say that your socialized medicine plan will not raise ANY sort of taxes for me since I make under $250,000 a year, I don't believe you...not for one second. You're such a little Joker Barack, now aren't you?

Hey everybody, I just thought I'd let you know that you should probably snitch on me because I don't agree with the president. At least that's what Obama wants you to do. Here's a little quote from the Official White House Internet site explaining it all. "There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spinning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via emails or through casual conversation. Since we can't keep track of them all here at the White House, we're asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems FISHY, send it to flag @ whitehouse.gov." WOW, Mr. Obama, would you also like us to send some books your way for you to burn? Maybe if you just burned all the books that don't support your policies and shut down all the Internet sites where there might be fishy rumors about socialized medicine you will COMPLETELY rule this country as the full dictator you would like to be. Oh no, we can't have people talking about politics via email or CASUAL CONVERSATION. Where would that lead?...Oh, maybe to people actually having an opinion and taking action against your policies before you spin anymore out of control! Mr. Obama, as a graduate student of Public Health, I have studied various universal or socialized health care plans that are in place throughout the world. I have also traveled to several countries where they have some form of socialized medicine. And let me tell you something, those plans DON'T work. Ask someone in the waiting line at the public hospital in Kumasi, Ghana who has been waiting for hours, maybe even overnight, to see a doctor and there are still 150 more people in front of them in line. Ask my parents' friend Irene who went to a public hospital in Brazil to get some lab tests done for some health problems she is experiencing and should see those lab results in about THREE months. Ask a lady I taught in my mission in Argentina who was going to the public hospital to receive chemotherapy for breast cancer. Some days she got treatment and other days she didn't...it just depended whether or not they had the medications she needed. They probably said to her, "Oh we're sorry, we know you have BREAST CANCER, but we just don't have any medicine today. Try back again tomorrow." As if an hour long bus ride to the hospital is easy for a 70 year-old with cancer! Yes, all people may have access to health care in these countries, but the health care disparity between rich and poor is still very apparent. The poor get health care but, what quality of health care? And the rich either just pay more money and go to a private doctor or hospital or they may just come to the United States of America to get their surgery or health care or they may just suck it up and take a lesser quality of health care with the poor people because they are already paying 20-25 percent taxes just to cover health care anyway, so they may as well use the "free" health care programs. The way I see it in the poorer, developing countries that have socialized medicine, the quality of care is pretty much horrible for the poor people and the richer people just pay in cash to go to private doctors and hospitals. In richer, more developed countries that have socialized medicine, they may still have pretty good health care but they PAY FOR IT with incredibly high taxes. We already have government programs to cover the health care costs of the poor, old, and handicapped. If there are any gaps in those programs I'm sure that those gaps would be covered by the donations of wealthy people in America to charities and NGOs, IF Americans weren't taxed so much. Leave the rich and even middle class alone and you'll find that they are pretty generous people. Today I spent over 400 dollars for a dermatologist appointment, lab tests, and prescriptions. And I didn't even fill one of the prescriptions I was given because it was way too expensive. I don't have health insurance. Well, just major medical. So, I had to pay that 400 dollars out of pocket. Too bad for me. I'm the one who CHOSE to quit my job and go back to school full time and so I'm the one who CHOSE to lose my health insurance. It isn't anyone's fault but mine and I don't expect anyone else to have to pay the consequences for my choice. (And just for the record, it is the ONLY bad thing about having quit my job...everything else = wonderful.) And if I get in dire straights I will just make little jars, put cute little labels on them that say, "Becca's Anti-ZIT fund," and will leave them at all the grocery store check stands. And nice people will drop their change into my Anti-zit fund and the world will be a wonderful place and we won't need some big government health plan to make it a wonderful place, because it already is. I'll close my ranting and raving with these words from Thomas Jefferson. "A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have." AMEN brother.