What Senator Baucus wants is this: “There is immense waste in the American health care system–immense waste. Basically, it is because of practice patterns, it is because of the way we reimburse on volume and quantity, not quality.

“We have to move much more toward reimbursement; that is, paying doctors and hospitals on the basis of quality, not volume, and concepts such as bundling and medical home and health IT, which is in the budget, so we have information technology assistance to help, in several years, get to the point where we reduce health care cost.

“But another is, frankly, comparative effectiveness. We need to know the comparative effectiveness of drugs, procedures, medical equipment, et cetera, so we get the best, highest quality, and we, therefore, will probably know which ones will tend to cost more than others. Doctors can make choices, patients can make choices, and insurance companies can make choices as to which procedure, which drug makes more sense. Basically, it is up to the doctor to decide which way makes the most sense.

“Now, the effect of the Kyl amendment, as I understand, is, frankly, to say that you have to pay for a very costly procedure that somebody deems to be not only ineffective, it may be harmful, and you have to pay for it. That does not make sense. Rather, I think the Senator from Arizona agrees with me, we are trying to figure out a way to use comparative effectiveness to help doctors have more information, and hospitals more information, as to which works better, has higher quality, and works better when compared to something else.

“We are going to have to get into issues such as evidence-based medicine to help determine quality. Lots of concepts here that make a lot of sense. But I wished to say that whereas the intention–I somewhat understand the intention of the amendment, somewhat. I do not entirely understand the intention of the amendment.

“But the effect of the amendment is to say that a procedure–let me get this straight. The language does not curb growth in health care spending by using data obtained by comparative effectiveness. It says there can be a procedure determined to be totally ineffective or may be harmful, but it has to be used. The doctor has to use it. That does not make sense.

“I think it is a doctor’s choice as to whether, by looking at the various procedures, what makes more sense compared to something else, using the data we provide by this process. But that is still a doctor’s choice. That doctor, he or she, that doctor should decide which of these makes the most sense.

“Therefore, I think it makes much more sense, frankly, that this not be approved. It is not necessary. It kind of gets in the way.”

A careful reading on your part would have assured you of that, rather than your misinterpretation of the amendment and the proposals on the floor.

Furthmore, no one is sneaking socialized health care into the proposals in the Senate or the House. Again, you have been misinformed and are misleading the public. All the proposals are about insuring citizens. A public option for insurance is still insurance, not government health care. A public option for insurance would compete with private insurance, but would only have to make a modest profit, not the huge dividends that stock holders want from investments in private insurance plans. No one should make a profit by denying care to sick people as the private plans have done. They should exist for patient care, not share-holder profits. If they are willing to compete and make modest profits, they will do well because employers, employees, and unemployed will select their plans. If they are greedy at the expense of patients, then patients will have a reasonable insurance option. To do otherwise is immoral and shameful.