My daughter, Susan, is a nurse in Dr. Dietzen’s office. He wrote a letter to the editor that we published today. I found it interesting.

Local physician shares views on health care reform

The following is a copy of my letter to our Congressman Mike Ross after reviewing his website documenting his reasons for voting against the 2,000-page 2009 House Health Care Reform Bill passed the first week of November 2009.

A bill of this complexity is impossible to fully grasp, given the nature of media coverage. Perhaps his vote is correct, but as the President and anyone who studies the problem will attest, the status quo is not an option for the future. The future expenses of the current system will exceed 25% of GNP by 2030 or sooner. This would amount to an impossible tax on the rest of the economy.

Dear Congressman Mike Ross,

I have read your stated reasons for voting “No” on the health reform house bill in November.

People ask me my opinion as their M.D. about the health reform bill. Perhaps it is too complex at 2,000 pages, however an honest appraisal of the bill does have to state what it would cost relative to expenditures if the system is not changed. It is not clear to me if your objection to the cost of the bill takes this into account. The objection based on number of pages seems ludicrous, as a bill without specifics is a playground for bureaucrats and special interests. Is it beyond the capacity of legislative analysts to summarize the points in a bill being voted on?

To me the only way to create a playing field may be to give the people a government option, which you oppose. It should resemble nothing like the VA and should be a lot like a smarter, i.e., self-funded, guideline driven, drug price negotiated, rate negotiated, version of Medicare which gets the insurance middlemen out of the picture in at least some of the market. The insurers would compete with this government plan or fail to attract subscribers.

Decisions already aren’t always made entirely between the patient and their physician. Ultimately someone has to allow for decisions to be made at a national level in the form of some guidelines or standards of care based on scientific analysis, et c. This means that delegated bodies of professionals will have to justify their disease specific health care policy decisions on a national stage. The market reforms to date which have been based on managed care, managed pharmacy benefits, et c., have been slightly helpful to the overall system and clearly some control must be exerted over the process of health care delivery with out placing the interest of the provider in opposition to the patient, which occurred during the HMO income withholds and capitation schemes of the ’80s and ’90s. Perhaps this was what you meant by the government or insurance bureaucrat coming between doctor and patient, but the doctor cannot be allowed unrestricted access to the government pockets without evidence based guidelines and some peer review. Insurance companies likewise cannot be allowed to pocket or waste 20-50% of the premium on administrative expense, executive bonuses of 1 to 100 million dollars per year and profit percentages which may exceed the entire government Medicare administrative cost percentage on expenditures.

It still appears to me that congress cannot do anything without the interests of lobbyists being foremost, which I believe may not be true in your case, however, in your justification for a “No” vote, you seem to have fallen in with the line of the medical insurance companies that reform is simply too scary to enact. Please do something to prove me wrong!

We, the USA, could go broke in a way that will result in a taxpayer vs. socialist revolution that will have patriots and grizzled veterans weeping. We cannot afford bad government now.

I suggest that Congress immediately and for twenty years remove itself from donor-financed campaigns, eliminate large PACs, continue restriction of large corporate contributions and set strict limits on overall campaign costs. Get back to the people by talking to them (!), and by using free media and franking privileges. The assistance of the Supreme Court will be needed to give the peoples vote a voice again, through campaign reform. Otherwise, reasoned discourse is disappearing from the electoral process in favor of sound bites and distortion to an uninformed electorate. Your response to health care reform must rise above the capitulation to these anti-reform sound bites as seen on your Nov. 7, 2009, health website.

Richard Dietzen, M.D.

El Dorado