Dear Congressman Price:

I was pleased to see that you are considering introducing a resolution to censure Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida in response to his comments earlier this week about the Republican approach to health care reform. Over the top, incendiary comments have no place in our politics. That is why I am writing to you today. There have been a number of other Members who have made what I consider to be similarly incendiary comments on the House floor, and I wanted to make you aware of these statements. The examples I am aware of are as follows:

-Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite of Florida said in July that the Democratic health care bill “essentially said to America’s seniors: drop dead.”

-Rep. Paul Broun of Georgia said in July that the adoption of a publicly funded health care plan would “kill people.”

-Rep. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina suggested that proposed reforms would “put seniors in a position of being put to death by their government.”

I am sure you will agree with me that these comments are just as reprehensible and deserve no less condemnation than Rep. Grayson’s comments this week. With that in mind, I strongly urge you to add these three Members to your censure resolution. Doing so would go a long way toward bringing the health care debate back to a responsible and reasonable level of dialogue.

Thank you for your consideration.

To hold his pants up?

…?

The for-profit insurance model for health care is a contrivance. The individual mandate is probably unconstitutional. The only way health care costs are going to come down is if not for profit operations are able to create risk pools big enough to drive down costs for everyone. The larger the pool, the better the price. But there are problems when there is but one primary competitor, single payer, because then there is no competition.

But wait! There is an out here, as government run health care is the responsibility of people who we elect to office, and bringing health care finance into the private sector will make it a consumer and political issue. Who needs market competition when we can replace nameless, faceless members of insurer boards of directors with the US Congress? Imagine, the marketplace of ideas fashioning health policy rather than anonymous insurance executives with captive markets.

It’s a dance. Do it back. Republicans want to waste time, let’s waste time.

Go read.

Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), leader of House conservatives, invoked Samuel Adams: “It doesn’t take a majority to prevail, but an irate and tireless minority keen on setting brush fires of freedom in the minds of men. Thank you so much for setting those brush fires.”