Dear Mr President

Dear Mr. President,

I am sorry for the grief that many of our nation have given you. I envy not your position, nor anyone ever in that position. Daily I battle with making decisions for just my family of six and can't even imagine making decisions for a whole nation.

I know I am just one, never been big on politics or even paying attention to what is going on. Often I am missing important bits of information on things that are going on, and most often rely on my dad to send me bits of political emails.

But thanks to MSN as my home page, I have been able to read a little here and there about some of the happenings. I must admit my daily thoughts and worries tend to not go past my front door, because there are plenty of things to worry about here. But I have had a head turning moment about this whole health care thing.

I have no idea how one can go and fix something as big as our health care system, one that has dug deep into the publics pockets and into the hands of a few. And at the same time, has been one that has made leaps and bonds in helping many but at a cost.

I am concerned about government involvement just a bit, maybe more scared of the unknown, yet I do know a little. My husband lost his job in December, and with out significant income and no insurance we have been blessed with medicaid to help us for our medical emergencies. As wonderful as it is to have it, it is a pain in the you know what! No one will take us.

My son who has some breathing problems, was turned away from an urgent care, after hearing we had medicaid. I called several doctors to find someone to see this same son about his skin, no one would take us. This is a problem. What type of benefits would doctors get for seeing medicaid patients? Why is it that they don't want to see medicaid patients? In the new reform how will it change their mentality?

I don't know the answers to these questions, and don't know how you will fix it. Maybe just maybe we could try something like:

• Offer competitive pay backs to doctors accepting government insurance.
• Offer plans for employers to provide benefits TO ALL their employees regardless of how many hours ( I just applied for a job, and they made the hours 27.5 hours so that they would not have to pay benefits....this kind of thing shouldn't happen.)
• Offer tax breaks for insurance companies offering affordable plans to everyone.
• Cash for Healthy Check Ups, get a clean bill of health and a gym membership.
• Require more recesses and PE at schools, provide more money to our schools to do these programs...(had a principal tell me that kids didn't need those, they can go for a walk once they got home from school....please tell me that kids really need to sit more than six hours at school with out breaks and movement.)
• Why can't we have health care like car insurance? Get to pick plans out there, and require limit on the max out of pocket for those, set it up as a flex spending account and get refunded the money not spent on health care for the year....

I just hope and pray that you and everyone involved in coming up with a way to get insurance to everyone can come to a common ground that will benefit all involved and not those not effected.

And on another note, I know all these bailout plans are diggin our nation deeper and deeper into debt, why not forgive ourselves our debt and start over...I won't tell anyone.

Sincerely,

Corrine