Point by Ed Holliday

The new healthcare law was passed using numbers that do not add up. No matter how many times Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid tell us that 2+2=2, most Americans are not mathematically impaired. The very idea that we will cover 35 million additional people and our government-mandated premiums will actually go down is preposterous. For President Obama to tell us that this law will help bring down our national deficit is disingenuous.

I do want everyone to have healthcare, and there are better ways to achieve that goal than this new law. You cannot strangle the goose that lays the golden egg and expect jobs. Already in Tupelo some healthcare workers are losing their jobs because of this new law.

The numbers were massaged to get this bill passed. Just look at the government takeover in this law of the entire student loan program to take almost 70 billion dollars out of the private banking system. The untruths will soon come home to roost.

By this fall the need for the “doctor’s pay fix” for Medicare will appear. Our leaders insisted that dollars for this “fix” were not needed for the new law. If the Democratic leaders vote to add in this “fix” then America will know the entire law is based on fraudulent numbers. If our leaders stand by their numbers and do not “fix” the doctor’s pay then good luck on finding doctors who will take Medicare at a loss. And this will just be the beginning of the pain to come. Voters pay attention to the politicians who think 2+2=2.

Counterpoint by James Hull

I am still amazed by those who have made such hue and cry about the national debt and budget deficits during the past 16 months or so, but swallowed their tongues during President George W. Bush’s eight years of misspending, overspending and outright travesties in spending. But we’ll save that for another column. About health care costs:

The fact is, Doc, recent healthcare reforms will save money, because the costs of emergency health care, unpaid medical bills and preventative health care will preempt the need for hospitals and other health care providers from raising their prices, which are invariably passed on to taxpayers directly and the federal government indirectly. This is an undeniable fact fiscal conservatives simply won’t admit.

And talk about disingenuous: several Saturdays ago, the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal carried a story below the fold with the headline (and I’m paraphrasing here), “Health care reforms could hurt health care.” Reading the headline you would think the story would tell us that reforms are a problem, but reading the story, you find out that reforms will expose a problem we’ve known for years, which is we have too few health care practitioners and service providers. In other words, the federal government will pay the bills for more sick people, but the professions won’t have enough doctors and nurses to treat them…Huh?

And as far as doctors opting out of Medicare, because the reimbursements are slower and lower than insurance and cash, my question is what happened to doctors who gave up self and entered the profession to help the poor, the sick and the elderly?

Dr. Ed Holliday is a Tupelo dentist who has written two successful books. Contact him at ed@teaparty.com. James Hull is an award-winning consultant and journalist. Contact him at hullmultimedia@aol.com.