There has been an enormous amount of FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) spread around by those who want to see the current status quo continue – ie, a few big insurance companies adding 25-30% to the cost of health care for us all. They see a government health care plan as threatening their guaranteed profits, and have somehow managed to convince quite a number of people that corporate profits are somehow more of a “right” than health care.

They would like us to believe both that:

• Government health care would be grossly inefficient.
• Private insurance companies would be unable to compete and therefore go out of business.

How could both of those be true? If the private companies are both more expensive and less efficient than government, shouldn’t they deserve to go out of business?

Next, adding a government option is portrayed as taking away our freedom.

Now, what freedoms does adding a choice take away? The freedom to lose your coverage if you become seriously ill? The freedom to lose your coverage if you lose your job?

If you currently have your own individual insurance, are you happy with the choices you were given? If anyone in your family has any chronic conditions, go shop for your choices if you become unhappy with your current provider. For at least a year, you would be paying both your premiums and the full cost of treating that chronic pre-existing condition.

For anyone currently covered under an employer plan, go try that exercise. Tell me how “free” you feel to quit your job and start your own business.

Politicians of both political parties routinely pay lip service to small business as the engine of both innovation and economic development. In practice, very little of what they do supports it. Big corporate dinosaurs have been bailed out form problems directly of their own making. Even the bailout recipients are still allowed to hand out millions in bonuses for short term excesses that actually contribute to long-term failure.

Small business owners, on the other hand, are more likely to take a long-term view. That is, if making the next payroll doesn’t overrule all other considerations. Not only are we (yes, I am a small business owner) not eligible for bailouts, but the bailouts handed out to the financial institutions that caused the current recession under the pretence that “we need to keep credit flowing” have not kept the credit flowing for small businesses.

We like to think of the US as the world capital of small business success. However, a recent report “An International Comparison of Small Business Employment”, points out that, among developed countries, the United States is actually has one of the “smallest small business sectors, as a proportion of total national employment”. One of the reasons for this is the lack of universal health care in the US. This chains employees to their cubicles. It makes it harder for small businesses to compete for talent. It makes it impossible for creative entrepreneurs with existing medical conditions to strike out on their own, unless they have a spouse with a large company health plan.

A vast majority of new jobs are created by small businesses, and those new jobs are much more likely to be created locally, rather than outsourced around the world. New jobs are what we need right now. Wall Street seems to be back on its feet (largely thanks to government-backed fire sales that have greatly reduced competition in what was already an oligopoly), but Main Street is still hurting.

American Small Business needs to have the health care worries of the current system lifted off the backs of its owners and employees. That would be adding to freedom, not talking it away.

Why has health care reform become over a thousand pages of gobbledlygook? Why can’t it be something we can all read and understand, instead of getting our information from fearmongering distortions?

Hear it is, plain and simple (comments welcome – remember, the whole bill, including your changes, cannot go over two pages):

Yes, I left the actual subsidies for universal coverage out of this bill. It is a separate issue. Lumping too much together is how we end up with thousand page bills that no one reads with ridiculous unintended consequences, some real and some imagined. This bill is one we don’t need Sarah Palin or Nancy Pelosi to interpret for us.

The House of Representatives passed a Pentagon Spending bill 400-30 this week that includes billions of dollars in spending that the Pentagon doesn’t want.

While money for additional F-22s was deleted, some of that was turned into spare parts for the F-22. Additional C-17 cargo planes and an alternate engine for the F-35 are included, even though the Department of Defense says we don’t need them. New presidential helicopters at almost half a billion dollars each that are unwanted overbudget toys made it into the bill.

Rep John Murtha of Pennsylvania insists that we must complete paying for programs that have proven they don’t work because otherwise we have to acknowledge that they were a complete waste of money from that start. But since the corporate backers are paying for his campaigns, he wants us to keep throwing good money after bad.

Additionally, the bill contains over 1100 earmarks worth about $2.7 billion. Rep. Jeff Flake tried to add amendments to remove the earmarks, but was voted down overwhelmingly by both parties, once again proving we have the best representation money can buy.