Dear Mr. President,
As Thomas Paine might have said about times such as ours, they try mens' souls. I thank you so much for your comments made in Colorado yesterday, defending needed health care reform and, even more, standing up for a public option. Watching clips from your comments from that town hall, I felt great excitement thinking that we had a President who would stand firm in the face of special interests who put their profits ahead the well-being of the American people. Hearing that you were prepared to be a one-term President over health care and energy heartened me even more. I know you get it, Mr. President. You're one of us, a citizen. Yesterday I was optimistic that we had a President who not only got it, but who was prepared to fight for it. A president who was prepared to fight for us.
Today I'm no so sure.
The headlines on all the papers trumpet that your White House is prepared to cave on the public option. As we all know, caving on the public option is caving on real reform. Co-ops are untried and untested.
They will not be serious competition to the for-profit health insurance companies. They will do nothing to stop them from increasing our premiums and their profits in the future just as they've done routinely in the past. They won't redirect any of those record profits back into actual health care services for the people who need it.
Those people that need it? Yeah, that's all of us. You and me. Well, you're President, so as you pointed out in your last press conference, you don't have to worry just now. Well I do. So do a few hundred million other American men and women and children.
Many of us worked hard to get you President, knowing you got it, and hoping you'd fight for it. Trusting.
There's important principals at stake here. We're going to learn something about the state of our union, by looking at what reform constitutes here. But beyond all that is the reason we're spending so much time talking about this. There's great need.
Like I say, I know you know that. So knowing it, why are you preparing to cave? What lessons are we to draw from that?
See, I really need this, Mr. President. I'm a small business man. Perhaps rashly, I started a business in the past year. I have a human-services agency that helps people with disabilities to live independently. I've worked in the human services for years. My jobs have provided me with insurance for most of that time. But for only two out of the 10 years I've been married have I been able to cover my wife. And during those two years, we had junk insurance.
I call it junk, because that's what it was. I had over $300 in premiums taken from my paycheck each month to give to Blue Cross and ended up with just shy of $6000 in health-care costs that I had to pay out of pocket. Blue Cross' share? Zero.
People who provide human services are severely under- and un-insured. Yet we see how well the government provides for the health care the people we support. Our clients almost all have Medicare and we see quality of the care they get. We can only dream of such coverage.
So now here I am. I'm a small businessman with no way that I see to provide my dedicated employees with insurance that is worth their money. That's a big worry.
Your chances of becoming a one-term President are greater if you cave on a public option and real reform than they are if you stand strong for us, the American people. Giving in to the special interests on an issue as important as this one is to me and most Americans won't motivate me to provide your 2012 campaign with too many of the hundreds of dollars I provided to your campaign in 2008.
You see what your up against with the lies and the opposition. You spoke better than I can yesterday about how inane it is to see something completely harmless and routine like advanced planning -- and something that conservatives themselves championed not long ago misrepresented as "death panels" out to kill grandma and Trig Palin.
What lessons do you think the people making these lies are going to take from this? What lesson do think I'm going to take from this? So far as I can see, caving on the public option will only embolden your political enemies and weaken your own political coalition.
Yesterday I was hopeful. Today I'm feeling a bit jaded and defeated.
Sincerely,
Joe Shimpfky