Here are the nuts and bolts of health care in a nutshell: assess, diagnosis, plan (plan of care), intervention, and evaluation.

That process works for numerous professions, for example, auto repairs, home repairs, you name it. The exclusion to this common sense process is government and the health care issue.

Health care insurance costs too much, and costs are rising. Medicare/Medicaid is out of sight. However, why are costs going up, and where is the money going? Has the problem been assessed?

I called different members of Congress and asked if they can tell me where all the healthcare dollars are going?

Why are health care costs rising? Heath care insurance companies have a two percent to five percent profit margin.

That leaves 95 percent, so, where does the rest of the money go? Are the doctors getting it? Does the money go to hospitals and hospital administration? I know for a fact it doesn't go to nurses or ancillary staff. Not one representative I called knew the answer to my questions. They don't know, the issue hasn't been assessed.

So instead of assessing where the money goes and why, then diagnosing the problem and implementing a plan of care to fix the problem, our brilliant politicians are going to change the whole system.

That's like someone taking their car to be repaired because the tires keep losing air and the mechanic states they need a new car they can't afford. The fact that the politicians haven't bothered to find out where all the money is going and for what it's going, tells me that this is not about health care.

This is about power and control. Any politician who plans to vote for this fiasco should be voted out of office, period. Instead of finding the waste, breaking down state barriers to increase medical insurance company competition that will drive down costs and instituting tort reform, they would rather burden future generations with their irresponsible spending and waste and increase our national debt. They have no common sense or standards of duty.

And speaking of standards, our political employees, who represent us and are paid by us, should be required to have real town hall meetings. Instead they have the phony baloney town calls where they hide under the desk, screen the calls, probably take friends and relatives calls, then cut the call short when there is a challenge.

For all we know it could be a Rich Little impersonator on the other end of the phone. So Mr. Murtha, the next time you have one of your cowardly town calls, kindly give advance notice, so area residents can have an appropriate dinner for the occasion, something like KFC.

Danna Krukowsky is a resident of Perryopolis