Rebecca Madsen - October 5, 2009

First, Representative Burton, thank you so much for all you are doing to take seriously and air the concerns of parents and children who are suffering and believe that the government has no business suppressing the views of its citizens and contributing to their suffering (especially with our tax dollars!!!). Secondly, how are we to support the idea of a public option in health care if the government can be so biased? I have spent so many years of my life--what might have been a career and certainly more fun and relaxation with my children--caring for two of the four who were sick. I believe government policies, including suppressing information about thermerisol, supporting drug manufacturers in drug based interventions in medicine (the doctor who gave my children normal lives detoxed them with vitamins and saunas), and contributing my tax dollars to unhealthy food delivery system, have contrib uted to our misery, and I certainly do not want a health care system that is the equivalent of the food care system we have as described in Food Inc!!! I am equally distrustful of the insurance companies. My insurer, Oxford, has brought an action in Texas to have the internationally celebrated doctor who treated my children, Dr. Rea of Dallas Texas, license to practice taken away. Yet thanks to government policies (employers, not individuals choose health insurers) I cannot complain to them. They have no customer service department!!! I also cannot change health insurance, so the government has designed a system that forces me to pay money to someone I consider to be endangering my childrens' health, and I can do nothing to protest except get my story out!!! Please work to get a health system that is responsive to individual consumers (Regina Herzingler at Harvard Business School has suggested some models). Again, many, many thanks for your effort to expose bureaucratic dishonesty in the autism debate. Rebecca Madsen