In response to the article  by reporter Natalie Hoffman about the health care forum, Sept. 3, at the Veterans Memorial Park, I would like to add three important points of my talk that the Register left out:

1) Bureaucracy: Much of my talk and my handout showed a picture of the enormous layers of bureaucracy that will be part of the Obama plan. According to the diagram, there are nine layers before the funding will even make it to the states, then another four layers before it even gets down to local doctors or hospitals. Think of all the money that will be siphoned off before any pay actually makes it to the doctors and medical staff. No wonder where such systems exist, the number of doctors, health care services and care diminishes. Who would want to be at the bottom of the totem pole of such a top-heavy structure of bureaucracy?

2) I also mentioned that neither President Obama himself, nor any member of Congress, has stated that they would take such a system themselves. Lynn Woolsey stated at her town hall meeting Aug. 31 in Petaluma that she is very happy with the federal system that the government has for all of its employees with all of its perks and benefits. When asked if she would leave that system for the one the government wants to force on us, she answered, “I work for the federal government.” There was a gasp in the audience. Here, all along, we thought she was working for us. We learned that evening that obviously the health plan that would be forced on us is an inferior one, only meant for the common folk, not the elite.

3) The suggestions that I gave for the kind of health system that would work for all of us was to get back to a free-market, free-enterprise system where there are no layers of bureaucracy, no middleman between you and your doctor. I spoke out against the HMO system that began in 1973 and which really started the “top-heavy, middleman” system and laid the foundation for a socialist system. Something that would work and would restore independence, responsibility and thrift would be to allow for individual health savings accounts, which, if not used, can go for your own retirement. Let people who are uninsured have vouchers or debit cards that would allow for choice and coverage. Such systems would only cost $25 billion for our entire nation instead of several trillion, as Obamacare’s socialized plan would cost.

Instead of an expensive, complex, bureaucratic, top-heavy socialist system that has provided less care and fewer health services anywhere where it has been tried, let us keep contacting  representatives, including Reps. Mike Thompson or Lynn Woolsey and Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, and tell them to vote ‘no’ on both the House bill and the Senate bill. Let us get back to a true free market American health care system that allows for liberty and independence and will not burden our children and grandchildren with any more enormous debt.

(Koehle lives in Santa Rosa.)