Thank you for writing to me about the current state of our healthcare system. I appreciate your point of view and share many of your concerns. I believe that it is vital that we act now to bring forth health care reform solutions that will lower costs for those currently covered by private insurance, strengthen Medicare for seniors and allow every American to access quality and affordable health care.
Our healthcare system is currently badly broken. Over the last ten years, health care premium increases have far outpaced earned wages and forty-seven million Americans, including three million New Yorkers, are currently uninsured and an additional 25 million are underinsured. With our current economic situation, many Americans are losing their insurance coverage when they are laid off from their jobs. Even people who thought they were adequately covered with the health insurance they purchased later learn that they are not when facing a catastrophic diagnosis. This is unacceptable. No family should be one health care emergency away from bankruptcy. Congress must act to provide stability in the health insurance industry.
Quality care for the patient, affordability for families and small businesses, and patient choice are all important considerations in reforming our health care system. We need a plan in place that Americans will be able to afford, as well as allow them a true choice between competing health insurance plans. Having a public option, similar to a Medicare-for-all program, would create competition and result in lower health care costs across the board. If you are happy with the coverage you currently have, a public option would also allow you to keep it.
I have been a strong supporter of affordable, quality health insurance for all. I am committed to addressing this important issue and will work with my Democratic and Republican colleagues on a bipartisan solution.
Thank you again for writing to express your concerns and I hope that you keep in touch with my office regarding future legislation and concerns you may have. For more information on this and other important issues, please visit my website at http://gillibrand.senate.gov and sign up for my e-newsletter.
Sincerely yours,
Kirsten Gillibrand
United States Senator
Response to her canned email:
Date: Tue, 01 Sep 2009 19:12:28 -0400
To: Senator Kirsten Gillibrand
Conversation: Reply from Senator Gillibrand
Subject: Re: Reply from Senator Gillibrand
Senator:
With all due respect, while your words “sound” logical, the truth behind the bill currently in question is a very different story. I do not and will not ever support, under any circumstances, anyone – Republican or Democrat – who believes that penalizing 85% of Americans who work and earn their health care coverage in order to “provide” health care coverage for the 15% who do not or cannot, for whatever reason, have coverage. The very idea is preposterous and that is why average, ordinary Americans, like myself are jumping to action. If our government cannot see the forest through the trees, it will be a tragedy. Socialized medicine does not and cannot ever work for the benefit of the recipient, it works for the benefit of the government. Every government program, to date, is an experiment in failure and the public continues to foot the bill. Now, you expect us to pay for our own demise? I don’t think so.
This Congress is a failure and the election of this president and the entire organized crime administration he has built is a travesty. This president promised transparency, we have none. During his eight months in office, he and his inept administration have rammed legislation through without considering the American taxpayer’s opinion, without ever giving the average American a chance to consider it. This president is the LEAST transparent man ever to sit in the Oval Office. All records of his education are sealed, we know little or nothing about him. He has built a network of characters, czars, and radical left wing extremists and he is agitated that the American public refuses to just sit down and shut up? He’s put into office common criminals and thugs and, Senator, if I were you...I would distance myself from this Marxist. This president is out of control, the government he has put into play is out of control and I’ve never been so ashamed of my government before in my life. Actions speak louder than words and the actions of the Democrats (in these past 8 months) do not speak “democracy” to me. My immigrant relatives did not come to this country in 1918, assimilate to all things American, learn the language, accept being treated in an inferior manner, work hard and earn everything they had so that it could all be stripped away by power hungry, blind politicians.
And so, thank you very much Senator, for your reply. I do not, however, “buy it” and I will do everything in my power to oppose ANY FORM of government run healthcare. No matter how “broken” our current system is, it is still superior to anything else I’ve ever seen or experienced anywhere else in the world. If the day comes that I need chemotherapy, exploratory surgery or even something as simple as an MRI, I want my DOCTOR to decide on that based on my medical history – I do NOT want my government to decide on my medical care based on their perception of the value of my contribution to society or whether or not someone else deserves treatment more than I do. No thank you.
Big government equals BIGGER problems. This is Communism and if you’d like to be affiliated with today’s modern Communists, then that’s your problem, but you will not convince me that this is democracy at work.
Most sincerely,
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