Ms. Pelosi: How About Taxpayer Discounts For Hospitalizations?

It is interesting the countdown which is now occurring with respect to the great health care debate and summit, and the legislation which is being proposed by the House Democrats in order to "reform" health care throughout the country.

Although it appears that only the "stakeholders" are the ones who are actually being consulted on most of this legislation, or the "misrepresentatives" who represent those stakeholders.

Throughout the country right now there are federally funded clinics that are set up and funded by U.S. taxpayers through their federal income taxes for those that do not have health care insurance, or cannot afford it based upon their incomes.

Right now, there are government grants given to a great many hospitals and health care clinics that have any loosely defined "educational" goals as part of their corporate structure, such as those "stop smoking" clinics, and women's hospitals providing for prenatal care and child birth and delivery.

Even large metropolitan hospitals that are staffed with pre-med or medical students upon graduation for their internship rotations get federal grant monies as teaching institutions.

Most states throughout the nation also have county hospitals, and VA clinics serving both the poor, and our servicemen for injuries or illnesses that are not war related.

Now, the Obama Administration wants to "take over" health care and reform it?

It appears the only reforms which are actually being made are those which are more of the nature of now, after all those hospitals have been funded and built by the taxpayers, and also county and state facilities, requiring now Americans to buy health care coverage whether they can really afford it or not, thus feeding mostly the private doctors and those few hospitals that do not have an educational branch and thus are not eligible for state or federal grant monies.

In Arizona, for example, smokers in that state pay for the health care plans for children of parents who cannot obtain insurance for them at any price. In fact, smokers throughout the country are funding most of the health care plans now in existence for kids of parents who cannot afford it.

A great deal of sales, property and/or state income taxes also are also geared toward funding those hospitals and clinics, and county hospitals, and the federal government has simply been providing matching sums for those facilities since, of course, the American people pay through the nose to both the feds and the states for many of the same governmental functions.

Not to mention, that most hospitals are also receiving huge sums though their various foundations from those Americans who are wealthy and needing tax write-offs, since the majority of hospitals also are deemed in this respect as "non-profits" for which citizens can deduct any and all donations.

With the amounts billed against most people's insurance, or those bills that many Americans receive, you would think that these hospitals have no other source of income other than that which they receive from the people that use them, or that these are truly "private" hospitals existing merely on what they receive for services rendered.

In fact, many hospitals and doctors office won't even take new Medicare patients, and some will only take them if those patients can be used in order to meet the requriements for their annual grant monies from the state or federal government, i.e., many will only accept only women who are pregnant for prenatal care and deliveries, as I found when attempting to schedule an appointment with a doctor in the South. No provision for women after childbearing age were being accepted under any public plans.

With these new reforms rather than those "coupons" that have been the hook which has been fed to the public in order to gain acceptance for this unconstitutional function of the federal government in assuming a local and state function, if anything, will there also be escalating tax rebates included in order to credit the taxpayers for all those state taxes they are paying which have been earmarked for health care, but which will most likely now go also to the state kitty for them to spend willy-nilly, and without accountability?

This country has never seen more homeless and jobless, and to even entertain mandating that Americans must now once again feed the health care and financial sector (such as AIG) and Wall Street instead of regulating those out of control greedy little bankers using those premiums currently to reinvest in riskier investments for higher gains for their global shareholders (and the big international health care providers and international bank who are gaining more and more power and say in domestic policies progressively with no regulation also whatsoever) seems Washington's arrogance at this point knows no bounds.

And where is it written that Washington or the states, for that matter, have any authority to mandate Americans purchase a "product" such as a health insurance policy, or our government go into any joint venture with them with taxpayer monies in more and more legislating just what Americans can spend their "left over" hard earned dollars on after Washington and the states take out their ever increasing shares, to begin with?