I need more...

Dear President Obama,

You are the only candidate I've ever felt strongly enough about to give money to (which is kind of a big deal because as a brown guy... I'm very cheap). I'm a young democrat who was moved by what you said and how you said it. While I think the crazy folk in the town-hall meetings are truly crazy - there are a lot of very real questions that you and your team have not answered on health care. I need more details now about what you're proposing... How are you going to bend the cost curve? The results in Massachusets and Maine have revealed a lot of problems with simply covering everyone or mandating coverage for everyone - the prime problem being an inability to reign in escalating costs. Is there a reason why we wouldn't expect the same with the current ideas that have been proposed? And simply squeezing more savings out of medicare by lowering reimbursement rates to hospitals and providers will not result in more efficient care being delivered. An example: if you reduce payments to all cardiologists by 40% as currently proposed.... The scrupulous folks who haven't been overordering tests get hurt, and the unscrupulous docs whose mantra is - "order a test and ask questions later" will do more tests. I voted for change I could believe in...so why not hit me with some innovative non-per-procedure based reimbursement that rewards quality and not quantity?

Asking the american public to sign on to a program that will make promises we may not be able to keep is just not good sense. Our deficit may hit 70% of our GDP in 10 years.. I believe health care is a right, I believe health care costs must be reigned in, I believe reform is vital to our future as a great nation...but you have to do more than the lip service being given to get me on your side on this one.