re:  Gut-check for Obama and Dems on health care overhaul

Commenting on the recent election of Republican Scott Brown to the US Senate in Massachusetts and the impact on the health care "reform" bills that passed the House and Senate — against which Mr. Brown campaigned — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi claimed that "Massachusetts has health care. ... The rest of the country would like to have that too."  My question to Ms. Pelosi is this:  if the "rest of the country" is so enthusiastic about the Massachusetts plan for health care, why have more states not implemented similar plans?

In fact, Massachusetts's experimentation with health insurance reform is in line with the Founding Fathers' vision of the states as "laboratories of democracy" — a marketplace of ideas instead of a top-down, one-size-fits-all approach dictated from Washington DC.  States are free to emulate the Bay State's program if they choose, or mix-and-match with various policies as they see fit.  That's the beauty of federalism.

Ms. Pelosi presumes to speak for what 300 million people "would like", and implies that without an expensive, intrusive, inefficient government overhaul, there is no access to health care.  She is wrong on both counts.

Sincerely,
Dave Smith
Houston, TX