Salt Lake City, Utah 84106
May 1, 2006

House Ways and Means Committee

I am not an enrollee in this plan. I have no immediate plans to enroll. This plan was hastily and poorly constructed along partisan lines with significant special interest pressure placed on House and Senate members by the powerful pharmaceutical industry.

The Plan is complicated and complex. All legislative members should learn a simple lesson from the computer programming industry in their very powerful and simple acronym – K.I.S. – simply translated as “Keep it Simple”. Often they add another “S” to the expression – standing for “Stupid”. Very appropriate for the outcome of this terrible piece of legislation, which ultimately hurts constituent citizens, but certainly enriches the pharmaceutical firms.

The Plan was written the way it was, I believe, to continue the pharmaceutical companies continued political contributions support to many if not most of the Nation’s elected representatives. This is obvious to me as there is no provision to negotiation of pricing. The pharmaceutical firms will charge what they wish. This is a major weakness which I hope will be overcome. Until it is, we will continue to see many more States taking the position of implementing their own plans, thereby weakening any centralized attempt to potentially benefit the entire citizenry of the Nation.

I resent the undue influence of special interests which predominate in all phases of the House and Senate business. It is about time that all of our elected representatives get back to the basics – governing our Nation with the interest solely being that of the Nation and its citizenry, and not their desire to be re-elected with special interest funding.

Sincerely,

George J. Mierisch