Hi, longtime lurker, first-time diarist. Today I received an email from the House Representative I consistently vote against, Pete Sessions. As you can see, it is full of misleading statements designed to try and convince me
Two quick notes before I get to the email and my response:
(1) I contacted him in the run up to Sunday's votes. Many thanks to the effort by President Obama (and my wife) reminding me to do this. I was clear about my feelings, while trying not to be rude, and of course letting them know that I understood the futility of trying to change his mind as he votes in lockstep with the rest of the Republicans when they tell him to.
(2) My district needed the Healthcare Reform bill to pass as much as any district possibly could (I read somewhere that my district has the largest uncovered rate in the country, although I have not double-checked that since Sunday's House votes).
Sessions' email:
Dear __:
Thank you for contacting me regarding the recent health care vote in Washington. As we all know, health care reform is an extremely important issue that deserves our utmost attention. It is essential that all Americans have access to affordable and quality health care of their choice.
White House Health Care Summit
As you know, the President and a number of Republican and Democrat Members of Congress attended a health care summit to address some of the nation's largest health care obstacles on February 25, 2010. This summit should have been a landmark opportunity to start over with real health care solutions. Siding with the American people, Republicans in Congress have consistently offered common-sense health care solutions that would increase access to quality, affordable health care. I am pleased that Republican Members demonstrated leadership by offering better ideas at the health care summit and held the Administration accountable for peddling health care policy inaccuracies. Unfortunately, the House of Representatives decided to take up the Senate passed health care bill without including any Republican ideas or amendments.
Health care Legislation and Reconciliation
Despite the public outcry against the Democrat health proposal, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (H.R. 3590) passed the House of Representatives on March 21, 2010 by a vote of 219-212, with all Republicans and 34 Democrats voting no. President Obama signed this legislation into law March 23, 2010.
This legislation was coupled with the reconciliation or "corrections" package, The Health Care and Education Affordability Reconciliation Act of 2010 (H.R. 4872). The reconciliation package passed the House of Representatives on March 21, 2010 by a party line vote of 220-211. The reconciliation bill has been sent to the Senate where it needs 51 votes to pass and be sent to the President's desk. However, if it is amended or subject to a point of order, reconciliation fails and the House of Representatives must start again on the "corrections" package.
The Senate package coupled with reconciliation has a price tag of about $1 trillion dollars. To secure this new federal spending the health care bill cuts Medicare, increases taxes on individuals, employers, insurance companies, medical device companies, and drug companies while mandating health insurance coverage for everyone, and creating a federal health board to prescribe "government-approved" health insurance.
Medicare will face cuts up to $523.5 billion - over $200 billion coming from Medicare Advantage - which will increase premiums and decrease benefits for all Medicare beneficiaries while speeding up Medicare's rate of insolvency. Additionally, there will be over $569.2 billion tax increases over the next 10 years.
The Majority quotes that this legislation provides coverage to 32 million people over the next 10 years. Unfortunately, 16 million people are placed into Medicaid, where there is a serious access problem because the government only reimburses doctors $.30 to $.60 on the dollar. Additionally, 23 million people will still be uninsured in the year 2019.
The Congressional Budget Office has declared that by increasing taxes on drug makers and medical devices, the costs would be passed on to all Americans with a 10% to 13% increase in health insurance premiums. Furthermore, this legislation creates a "Medicare tax" on all investment income which stifles investment, innovation, and job growth during a time of record unemployment and deficits. The country needs pro-growth solutions - not more taxing and spending.
Additionally, the Senate bill that President Obama signed into law on March 23, 2010 was riddled with special projects for Senate and House Members to secure their vote for the bill. Nebraska ("Cornhusker Kickback") and Louisiana ("Louisiana Purchase") get hundreds of millions of dollars to bail out their bankrupt Medicaid programs, and states like Florida ("Gator-Aid") are exempt from any of the Medicare Advantage cuts in the bill. Yet most states, including Texas, received no special deal or kick-back to cover their uninsured populations.
What Healthcare Reform Needs
Patient-centered solutions, not government programs, will be the driving force of ensuring nationwide, equal-access to health care. Every American deserves access to affordable health care regardless of their health condition. If Americans are happy with their current health coverage, they should be allowed to keep it. Prevention and wellness should be advocated to all Americans to ensure a healthier generation.
In an effort to reduce costs, Congress should be promoting greater pooling options. Equalizing the tax treatment of health care dollars to allow individuals and small businesses the same pre-tax purchasing options that larger employers and unions enjoy would help affordability for many that are currently uninsured. We need to promote portability and ownership so individuals are not tied to their employer health plans, and they have the flexibility to take their insurance from job to job and across state lines.
Thank you again for contacting me with your thoughts and concerns about reforming the nation's health care delivery system. If you have any additional comments on this issue, do not hesitate to contact me or my Legislative Correspondent, Schylr Greggs, at 202.225.2231 or Schylr.Greggs@mail.house.gov. I look forward to hearing from you in the future on other matters of interest or concern.
Sincerely,
Pete Sessions
Member of Congress
My response:
Dear Mr. Sessions,
This is one of the most disingenuous and intentionally misleading communications I have ever read. It is not even coherent. For instance, how is it even possible to stand against the Senate bill because of the "Cornhusker Kickback" and stand against the additional package the House voted on with support from President Obama which fixes the problem? How are the democrats to be blamed for partisanship when some voted for and some voted against (with different tallies in each of the three votes), while every single Republican brazenly voted against all three?
While I acknowledge that some of the ideas some Republicans in Congress suggested actually made it into this bill (and I note your disagreement on this point), I have not seen evidence of any solutions Republicans have offered outside of this bill. I pay a lot of attention and the only thing I have seen is Republicans trying to block the efforts of people trying to make improvements on a broken system by refusing to even consider voting for the bill.
Just do us all a favor and stop trying to stand the way of the people trying to help your constituents and our nation as a whole in a way you have consistently refused to. At least know that you are not going to persuade me with feeble attempts such as this email.
Sincerely,
[name deleted]
I do not know how well my points came across. I could have gone into more detail, verifying every aspect before sending it out, but I really just wanted to send the thing. I could have written a treatise, picking apart his email sentence by sentence. I also could have been ruder, uncensored even. I just thought something needed to be said, and quickly. I also wanted to keep the debate fairly high-level while making sure to be clear about how I felt about him. It won't change his mind, but at least he can't say he wasn't told that some of his constituents disagree with him.
I felt I needed to share this with all of you, even though I normally just lurk here and read others' diaries.
Regardless of any of this, I will be proudly donating to and campaigning for Grier Raggio this year. We couldn't get Sessions out of office in 2004 (note that I moved away from this district for a while) with Martin Frost, but this time I plan to use Sessions' healthcare stance against him. That may just tilt the scales enough to send him packing in November. Let's hope.