Now that the nation's hospitals have offered to give up $155 billion in future Medicare and Medicaid payments and America’s largest private health care insurers say they'll give back as much as $2 trillion by reducing the growth rate of health care spending by 1.5% per year during the next decade, all to help defray the cost of President Barack Obama's health care plan, I've decided the least I can do as an average citizen is not to opt for expensive elective surgery during the same period.

Between now and 2020, therefore, I pledge not to get hair transplants ($10,000), Invisalign braces ($5,000), a neck and profile lift ($5,300), calf implants ($4,500) or buttock augmentations ($18,000 -- I know that sounds expensive, but I'm giving up a trip to Brazil), rhinoplasty ($5,500), otoplasty (as you age, your ears just get bigger and bigger -- $2,800 each or $5,600), and liposuction (hips -- $2,400; outer thighs -- $3,000; buttocks -- $1,800); plus non-surgical fees (figure $128,000 spread out over all these procedures), for a grand total of $189,100.

Doesn't sound like much compared to the billions and trillions being donated by the hospitals and insurance companies, but if even 1% of 300 million Americans make the same contribution I am, we will save $567,300,000,000, and be happy to do it.

Actually, I'm even willing not to have these procedures every year, increasing the savings ten fold!

So, my fellow Americans, the challenge is this: ask not what your country cannot do for you, ask what you can not do for your country.

2) Where's the T-shirt / bumper sticker that reads:

"Best Democracy Money Can Buy / The Obama Chapters" ?

I wonder if anyone else caught the "paid-for-by-big-Pharma" advertisement weaseled into this comment thread, posted by Max Entropy. It bears reprinting:
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"Drug lords robbing us blind."
WTF?
The "drug lords" spend hundreds of millions of their own dollars researching and testing pharmaceuticals that save or improve the lives of billions of people and they are demonized? Many of the drugs that they develop don't work and they lose money on them... their money, not yours. I'd hope that the risks that these companies take would be rewarded and their contributions to the well-being of humanity appreciated but apparently it's not to be so from you and your ilk.
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Nice try, Max. Pharmaceutical companies take risks not in the name of "the well-being of humanity," but in the name of profit. If they lose money sometimes, that's the chance ya take in the game of capitalism.

The figure "hundreds of millions" is inflated, as noted in this NTTimes article: http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/health/042300hth-drugs.html

Let's also not forget that our tax money funds research for medical cures that are then handed over to the Pharma companies so that we can pay for them again when we buy the drug.

Furthermore, how about those clinical trials paid for by drug companies? http://agonist.org/20060303/drug_industry_human_testing_masks_death_injury_compliant_fda

Finally, it should be pointed out that, despite the industry's claim to the contrary, pharmacy companies spend twice the amount of money on sales & marketing of their product than they do on research and development.
http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0050001#top

With these points in mind, I would be careful not to paint a picture of US drug companies as White Knights on a hilltop.

Let us band together, start this bill, and save our nation.

He got Big Pharma to agree to spend $150 million, more than McCain spent on his entire presidential campaign, on favorable ads for his health plan.

Now isn't that special.

Now think: if Obama isn't saving us money, but delivering us like trussed pigs to the slaughterhouse (drug companies, insurance corporations), is he pushing his health plan for US? If not, who benefits? Follow the money, find the motive.

I just got off the phone. My congresswoman Debbie Halvorson D-IL-11 held a "Phone-hall meeting"

During the call she mentioned the $80 Billion savings atleast 8 times!

Unfortunately, I didn't get to correct (educate) her during the "phone-hall" ,but I did email your article to her and will give her a copy in person on Saturday when I see her at her signature petition drive.