Editor:

If the health care reform bill is not passed or is severely weakened, who will be the winners and losers?  One winner would be the Republicans who have been throwing road blocks in the path of the bill. 

Another winner would be the blue-dog Democrats saying that we cannot afford this plan.  The blue-dogs weren’t griping too much as the Bush administration spent almost $1 trillion on their wars. 

The biggest winner will be the entrenched medical industry which does not want to see any change in their profits.  This would include the American Medical Association, the pharmaceutical industry, and the health insurance companies.  These industries contributed nearly $500 million to campaigns in 2008. 

This year health insurance companies have been spending at the rate of $1.5 million per day.  Where does all this money go?  It goes into the campaign coffers of our elected representatives. 

You may wonder who is running this government.  Is it the entrenched interests, the elected representatives, or the people?  The losers would be the Obama administration which would have spent an enormous amount of their political capital.

The biggest losers would be the 49 million Americans with no health care and the thousands of recently unemployed who have lost their health care as well as their jobs.  Since over 70 percent of American citizens polled favor a strong health care reform plan, we have to make our voices heard. 

Let’s rain showers of e-mails, phone calls, and letters to our representatives to show them what we want. 

Robert Van Velkinburgh

Syracuse