Dear Representative Speier:
I write to urge you to oppose the health care ‘reform’ bill, so-called ObamaCare, that is currently before the Congress. I ask this for two main reasons:
The first reason is the disparate impact that this bill will have on your district. As you may be aware, the bill imposes a 8% employment tax on growing small businesses, raising the cost and discouraging the creation of new jobs. This is a grave error at a time when the national economy needs small business to lead a recovery in employment. It is specifically a problem for your district, as the formation and growth of startup ventures is key to its economic vibrancy, as well as that of the entire Bay Area. Further raising the costs of jobs here will reduce new venture formation, and send more jobs from growing ventures overseas. This will not only adversely affect your constituents, but will reduce the ability of the Bay Area to attract talent from around the United States and abroad.
Another disparate impact is that on biotechnology, now an important employer and source of growth here on the Peninsula. As you may be aware, the bill before Congress directly imposes taxes on medical devices, many of them created here. This will not only affect the ability of local ventures to grow, but will impose higher costs on those who most need such therapies. The indirect effect of the bill is as bad, if not worse. As a venture investor myself, I can attest that the effect of further regulation and the threat of ongoing political interference in an economic sector is to send investment fleeing elsewhere, to other sectors, or abroad. Both the economic health of your district, and the literal health of your constituents in the future will be adversely affected by this bill’s discouragement of investment and innovation in biotech.
The second major reason to oppose the bill is moral. In our free economy, employees and entrepreneurs alike trade their efforts and the literal time of their lives in the hopes of monetary rewards. How great an imposition is it to tell them how they must, or may not, spend those rewards to enhance their lives, including protecting them with insurance or therapies? Beyond the outrage of using such force against free citizens, the rationing and discouragement of medical advances that accompany government interference in healthcare will affect their very lives. It is apparently more convenient for our government to impose on American’s lives, than to honestly and openly fund medical transfer payments on the budget. American are unlikely to forget or forgive those who would so damage their freedoms.
Sincerely,
Tim Oren
(The original of this letter was handed in at the representative's San Mateo office yesterday.)