The following letter to the Kansas City Star was written by Derrick Sontag, director of AFP-Kansas, and Carl Bearden, AFP-Missouri director, in response to a previous column by the Star’s editorial board. We have yet to see this guest opinion editorial published in The Star:

As directors of the Kansas and Missouri chapters of Americans for Prosperity—an organization that has taken the lead against the overhaul of our nation’s healthcare system—we believe it is necessary to respond thoughtfully to the paper’s editorial from July 26, 2009, entitled “Let’s dispel the myths holding up health care reform.”

It’s a false dichotomy that if you’re against President Obama’s vision of healthcare reform, you are against all reform. There are 50 million Americans who do not have medical insurance. About one-third of these have a real problem: pre-existing conditions, between jobs or self-employed, not poor enough for Medicaid. They cannot afford coverage. In addition, Medicare is going into the red in 2017 and rationing efforts have started. VA medical care is substandard. Insurance is inscrutable and expensive. It makes sense to fix these problems first.

But, instead of attempting to solve these problems, the Democrats are attempting to sweep everyone into the same, going-broke system. The strategy is to offer an innocent sounding Public Insurance Policy, “as good as your Senator has.” It will be subsidized by your taxes and have monopolistic power to suppress prices and doctor pay. In a stampede to save costs, most employers will dump their gold plated health plans and put their employees on a cheap government plan – whether they want that or not. Unions will follow suit.

Within two to three years, 119 million people will be swept into this plan, leaving just 6 million on private care – which translates into only 2 percent of us. Not enough to fund new drugs, not enough to have private hospitals or MRI centers in many locations.

These are legitimate concerns that need to be addressed. However, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said over the weekend that she will force a vote this week—in spite of the fact that most Congressmen have not had a chance to read the 1,000+ page bill. On Monday, Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) shockingly stated, “What good is reading the bill if it’s a thousand pages and you don’t have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?”

We’re talking about a complete revamping of our medical system and Conyers questions the validity of reading the whole bill?

This is why Americans for Prosperity in Kansas and Missouri, and around the country, is urging Congress to take its time—to vow to read any healthcare bill in its entirety and to count the long-term costs of any legislation.

Carl Bearden is state director of Americans for Prosperity-Missouri. He lives in St. Charles, Mo. Derrick Sontag lives in Topeka, Kan., and is state director of Americans for Prosperity-Kansas.

We have not seen this piece published in The Star to date, but if anyone has seen it in the paper or online, please let us know: info@afpks.org.