What I wrote to my congressman and senators

I hope you're working on real health care reform. Using insurance companies to pay for spiralling costs just adds their administrative costs to the already soaring price of medical care.

I can't afford to keep paying premiums that go up 15%-20% a year. My income certainly doesn't go up 15%-20% a year. In New Hampshire I'm lucky if my income holds steady, let alone goes up.

Don't try to tell me that medical savings accounts will take care of anything. If a person can't afford to save at all, a restricted-use account will not help. When I did get suckered into a medical savings account a few years ago, it cost me money and saved me nothing.

Only by chance did my wife and I get to deduct our medical insurance costs on our tax return, because she is mostly self employed and I derive a small amount of income from freelance writing. If we both worked for small businesses we would have to pay for our expensive insurance and we'd get NOTHING back on taxes.

The country needs positive action on this, not political bushwa. Either that or let's publicly acknowledge that our system is designed to weed out lower income people because they are less valuable human beings. Come on, let's hear it. Drop dead, low income scum!