A letter I wrote to my Senator this morning about hypocrisy.
Dear Senator Collins,
You appeared on TV this week and rejected the idea of any sort of public option or trigger for such.
So I have two questions.
- Can you please formally (via press release perhaps) announce the day you are dropping your government run health care and reimbursing the country for the the past twelve and a half years it was provided.
According to the current plans available for Federal, non US Postal Service, employees the going rate for for a single person plan in Maine is as below. Oddly enough, there is no choice, you can only choose Aetna.
Total Cost 2008, bi-weekly: $151.50
Total Cost 2009, bi-weekly: $161.92
Government Pays: $121.44
Employee Pays: $40.48
Change in Employee Payment 2008-2009: $2.61
By the way, I work for a very large corporation and I have to pay $196.32 every 2 weeks for my family. Which did not cover some $2000 in medical bills in the past year alone. The federal plan would be $93.10. If I could use the same plan you do, I would save $2400 per year. If my company could pay the same rates, they would pay 279.31 instead of $463.42, saving them $104.01 every two weeks as well. If they were generous and split the savings between me and them, I would get another $1352 per year. I am sure that a $3752 raise would be most welcome.
Back to your opposition to the public having the same care you do.
Current government contribution is $121.44 and most reports say costs have doubled in last 10 years, so we will assume it was $60.72 then, with an average of $91.08.
662 weeks and 3 days you have been in office, since January 3, 1997
Assuming it takes a couple of weeks to get the money together and write the press release, we will round up to
664 weeks.
Cost is bi-weekly, so 332 payments of $91.08 is $30,238.56.
Interest rates have dropped, but the IRS interest rate for underpaymentfor the last 10 years has averaged 6%.
Without worrying about compounding, that adds another $1814.31 for a total of $32,052.87.
Until you can get this together, we can just add $100 more every two weeks until you are prepared to stand by your words.
- Can you please announce the name and number of the bill you are planning to introduce to dismantle the following government run programs that offer insurance to ~80 million Americans in favor of private insurers:
a) Medicare
b) Medicade
c) VA care
d) TRICARE
e) SCHIP
f) Federal Employees Health Benefits plan
If you do not want to do either #1 or #2 or both, then can you please explain why it is acceptable to offer approximately yourself and 80 million other Americans a public option via the above plans, but not the rest of us?
Sincerely,