My letter on Obama's Health Care Plan

To The Editor: I am writing to explain why, although I supported Obama in the primaries and the general, am in imminent danger of losing health insurance myself and passionately support universal healthcare, I cannot support the President's approach. While President Obama has eloquently articulated all the reasons that we need health reform -- the tragedy of the uninsured, the rising rate of medical bankruptcy, the denial of care to the insured and the burden of healthcare on employers and on job creation, among others -- his solutions would do little to alleviate most of the problems he identifies and might make some worse. In embracing individual mandates he has increasingly adopted a line of argument that makes those without health care the scapegoats of health reform. In insisting on a $900 billion price tag he has ensured that subsidies will be too low to make individual mandates affordable. And in rejecting any measures that would challenge the current employer-based system he has ens ured that health care reform will not do anything about the dampening effect health insurance costs have on employment. All in all it appears, as Sen. Rockefeller intimated in the Senate Finance Committee, that his efforts are aimed more at claiming victory than in achieving any specific outcome. In conclusion, let me note that while this letter is stimulated by an outreach effort from Obama's Organizing For America network, it has NOT followed the script they provided because I disagree with the script. I am unemployed political science professor living in Los Angeles and I get to follow this issue pretty closely these days. Their claims don't hold water. Arun Swamy