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Health Care Reform by Norm Siler

• Aug 5, 2009 Posted by Karen Erb
  ""I am working hard to make sure that small business owners are protected in this legislation."

  
  

  Sounds familiar, right? Republicans have been parading their deep dedication to shielding and promoting small business for years. Especially among the owners of small businesses.

  
  

  But if you look around for a neighborhood pharmacy or independently-owned gas station or locally-owned auto parts store, you might have to push Walgreens and BP and AutoZone out of the way during your search. A search likely to prove futile, because most of those small businesses and many others are gone. Just since 2000, and not due to any headline grabbing attack by foreigners.

  
  

  Right now, during late summer of 2009, Americans are engaged in a head-turning struggle to find out what health care reform really means to the average family. And to the typical small business, whether an employee there or its owner.

  
  

  Rumors have been spread that senior citizens will have a visit from a bureaucrat counseling them -- and wanting to know how they want to die! Farfetched as it might seem, some Americans have become so mistrustful of their government that they ask for assurance that the rumor isn't true. A few refuse to believe any reassurance.

  
  

  Rumors have been spread that the planned changes under scrutiny in Congress will bankrupt the nation, apparently unaware that hundreds of families every day are pushed into bankruptcy against their best efforts because health care expenses overran their incomes and savings.

  
  

  So, what do we do? Who can we believe?

  
  

  Let's try a longer look at the goals of the person quoted above, who assures us he wants to protect small businesses. His name is Steve Kagen. Congressman Steve Kagen. Steve Kagen, M.D. He represents Green Bay and surrounding area in Wisconsin, surely no place for anyone to doubt that the NFL's smallest franchise TV market knows something about protecting small business. Even a small business like the Green Bay Packers, famous in "Titletown" for competing against the biggest teams from the biggest cities in America.

  
  

  John Nichols writes at The Capital Times site about "Dr. Kagen's Rx for small-business health care ills."

  
  

  http://www.madison.com/tct/column/460658

  
  

  I encourage everyone to read it.

  
  

  Norm Siler
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