My Letter to the Honorable Lincoln Davis

Representative Davis:

My wife and I are graduates of Vanderbilt University Medical School (I was Class of '89 and Angela Class of '90).  I am a practicing pathologist living in Williamson County in your district with my wife and four kids.  My wife had worked in a Medicaid outreach clinic when we lived near Syracuse, New York, before moving back to Tennessee in 2006.  We both urge you, with every fiber of our being, to vote no on this "health care" proposal.

There are so many objectionable components to this monstrosity that I don't know quite where to begin.  As physicians, our first concern is that the locus of decision-making on health care decisions moves into the political arena.  This could not be more at odds with the foundational principles of this country.  Our rights derive from our Creator, not from the beneficence of some all-knowing elite - that was the very basis for us to declare our independence.  Those rights not explicitly given to the government in our constitution belong to the states and the people.  The right to seek happiness - in this context, the right to find appropriate health care - should not be something that is diminished on the whim of a bureaucrat.

The federal funding of abortion should make this legislation DOA, no pun intended.  As a pathologist, I have held in my gloved hands the remains of aborted children - yes, children.  You see, my job as a pathologist is to recognize human tissue in its normal state and in its protean diseased states, so as to enable a clinical doctor to make treatment decisions.  What is aborted in an abortion is a human being.  This isn't me opining, it is a biomedical fact.  The only argument is whether these human beings have constitutional rights by virtue of possessing "personhood".  Let the sophists have that argument, but please don't ask me to pay for others to destroy human life.  That would be unconscionable.  Moreover, the Supreme Court, whatever the wisdom of its decision in Roe v. Wade, established "privacy" as the right under which abortion is protected.  If it's a private matter, then do NOT ask others to fund it.

The legislative back-dealing that has gotten this proposal this far is a stain on the democratic process and on the institutions of government that are supposed to embody "we the people".  There is no deal so "good" that it can make this overreach of governmental control palatable.  I don't care if you pay off my mortgage, send my kids to college, and allow my wife and me to take a cruise every year for the rest of our lives - I will continue to oppose this.  Some things are not for sale.

My wife and I made the decision to move back to Tennessee in large part because of the atmosphere that New York state's corrupt government had created in its citizens, or perhaps better stated, its subjects.  There is a palpable sense of a limited future among the population.  The only growth industries are government and education (and there, mainly among administrators).  As our kids were about to enter high school, we asked ourselves if New York was really the place where we wanted our kids to mature into adults.  The answer was no.  We wanted a place where the promise of America - of individuals with liberty, free to pursue happiness - wasn't some kind of ironic cliché, but was embodied in the citizenry.  We made the mistake of leaving Tennessee in 1996; we weren't about to let the opportunity to return pass us by.

As an aside, I served a term as a county legislator in Cortland County, New York, in an attempt to address the fiscal issues that plagued the state.  Many of our friends with children older than ours lamented that their kids left New York and weren't ever going to return.  When I explained to them that the reason their kids were moving to Kentucky, the Carolinas, Florida, and Tennessee, was the high taxes of New York state - not only the income tax, but the outrageous property taxes and the overflowing cesspool that was a corrupt and overly powerful Albany.  Remarkably, even though they agreed, they balked when I offered Tennessee in contrast: growing, businesses thriving, and all without an income tax.  The two responses I got most frequently were: (1) Who wants to live in Tennessee? and (2) The people don't get the same good government services we get here.  I asked them to tell me, absent snow removal, what "government services" they received that I, having lived in Tennessee for ten years, might have missed.  That usually resulted in them going back to response (1).

What this "health care" proposal (and I put it in "scare quotes" because it has so little to do with health care and so much to do with governmental control) is to remake the Albany model on a federal scale.  My move to Tennessee to live among those who embrace and abide by the founding principles will have been for naught.  The profession my wife and I pursued will no longer have as its first principle "First, do no harm".  Instead, it will be "Is this permitted?"  I don't think that this is a recipe for a sound future for me, my wife, our profession, or our country.

There are plenty of simple steps that could be taken to make health care more affordable, accessible, and in line with American values.  Why would we not try these first?  First, decouple the link of employment and health insurance through changes in the tax code - this is the entire basis of the distortions in the current system.  Next, establish health status insurance as a component of catastrophic insurance.  Allow competition across state lines and remove the state insurance boards and their counter-productive mandatory coverages.  Next, enact real tort reform - the silly "demonstration projects" in this proposal (if they are still even in there) are laughable.

You state that you "analyze all legislation using my independent Tennessee values as a guide".  If true, we should be able to count you as a "no" vote, shouldn't we?  Please go on record that you will be voting "no".

Respectfully,

Paul DiGiovanni, MD