Today’s installment looks at Healthcare.  As you will see, Mr. Barnett is a big, big fan of 0bamacare.  Double-plus ungood.

I was very happy to see comprehensive healthcare reform pass in late March.

Why are all of Congress’s “comprehensive” bills so incomprehensible that the congresscritters themselves don’t read them?

The only way I could have been prouder is if I had been in Congress to cast a “yea” vote myself. Healthcare costs are out of control. Thirty years ago, healthcare was 8½% of the American economy. Now it’s twice that — 17%. Where will it end? When healthcare costs 20% of the economy, or 25%?

Sorry, but that does not even pass the “so what” test?  What does Mr. Barnett think we should be spending our money on?  Food?  We’re already obese.  Houses?  The average house, like the average body, is already 60% larger than it was in 1970.  More cars?  Greenhouse gasses.

The reason we are spending more on health care than we were in 1980 is that we have better healthcare than we did then — better diagnostics, better drugs, better surgical techniques, better artificial body parts, etc.  In 1980, the average new car cost $7200, and the median household income was $17,710.  An average new car thirty years ago cost 37% of the average annual income.  In 2009, those numbers were $28,400 for the average new car, and $49,777 for the median household income. A new car cost 52.8% of median household income last year.  Why the increase?  Better cars — airbags, antilock brakes, better fuel economy, etc.  I don’t hear Mr. Barnett complaining about car prices.

Even with these immense costs, tens of millions of our fellow citizens still can’t get healthcare.

That’s pure bull.  Hospitals are required to treat everyone who comes through their doors, regardless of the patients’ ability to pay.

We needed comprehensive healthcare reform, and I am proud of those in Congress who championed this effort.

I’ll agree that reform was needed, but what they did made a bad situation worse.

This bill addresses all of my top healthcare reform priorities:

• Affordability: Make healthcare affordable for everyone. Small businesses and self-employed individuals should pay the same premiums per person as large corporations. This bill opens access to exchanges that will provide small businesses with access to healthcare plans that were not available in the past.

Assuming any insurers actually agree to be in the exchange. Why should they? Everyone is now required to have insurance, so why offer insurance to an exchange that will make you less money?

• Pre-Existing Conditions: Guarantee coverage for people with pre-existing conditions. It is un-American when people with pre-existing conditions can’t get health insurance or can’t change jobs over fear of losing coverage. This bill guarantees coverage for children with pre-existing conditions almost immediately, and phases it in for adults over the next couple of years.

As you may have heard, several large insurers are simply not offering such policies. Good for them. Such an inane requirement merely means a parent doesn’t need to buy insurance for his child until after the child gets sick. Mr. Barnett, and those who voted for this provision, either do not know how insurance works, or they know and want to destroy the insurance industry. After all, if no companies offer child health insurance because of this law, the government will have to do it, and we’re one more step on the way to the single-payer system they really want.

• Coverage: Any American who wants healthcare should get healthcare. As many as 30 million Americans cannot get affordable healthcare under our current system. They must go to Emergency Rooms to get help. This is immoral, unnecessary, and wasteful. This bill expands coverage to allow these 30 million Americans to get health care.

Talk about contradicting oneself. First, he says that these people cannot get affordable healthcare, then he says they can get it free from the hospitals. How much more “affordable” does he want it to get?

He is right about one thing, though: it is immoral. It is immoral to force people to work without pay, which is what our government requires of hospitals.

• Cost: Get healthcare costs way down. America spends twice as much money per person on healthcare as our global competitors. Many of the controls in the bill are untested. As your Congressman, I will stay on top of IMPLEMENTATION – to make sure we actually cut costs.

So what? It is our money to spend, is it not? How much more do we spend on cars? Has it ever occurred to you that we spend so much because we can? Because, having higher incomes than our competitors, we can spend more on healthcare?

To Mr. Barnett’s way of thinking, it is not our money to spend.  The Democrats in Congress, who in two years increased our deficit by a factor of six, know better than we do how to spend what we earn.