Seniors Tsunami Headed Toward Congress

Statement By 60 Plus Association President Jim Martin

Alexandria, VA — It’s time to pull the plug on health care proposals that are not quite dead but are clearly on life support.

Perhaps it’s time to abide by President Obama’s suggestion at a town hall meeting in June when discussing medical procedures and the elderly: “Maybe you’re better off not having the surgery but taking the painkiller.”

So many seniors who are pained by these thousand page documents that were largely unread by those who supposedly wrote them, are saying, loud and clear, it’s time to start over and, in fact, the President should fulfill a promise he made time and again as a candidate.

He repeatedly said any overhaul of healthcare should be negotiated publicly and televised for all to see. In his stump speech he would say it should be televised with a big table and seats filled with doctors, nurses, insurers, and other interested parties. Then he would joke, as President, he would get the biggest chair. Not behind closed doors, candidate Obama said, but he would bring all parties together and broadcast those negotiations on CSPAN.

Did that happen? Of course not. There’s been a misdiagnosis.

I have news for politicians who want to take a wrecking ball to a system that clearly needs change to reduce cost but that works well. There’s a senior citizen tsunami flooding toward Capitol Hill and unless it subsides there will be political pain to pay at the polls in 2010.

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