SAN DIEGO, January 21, 2012 — Americans wake up! If you think the new healthcare law will help you, think again! If you are pleased with health insurance improvements such as ‘no pre-existing condition clauses’ and ‘children having coverage on their parents insurance until age 26′, then please entertain the notion that these two concepts are not exclusive benefits available only as a part of the 2,700 page Obamacare fiasco.
Most people are not against Obamacare because they’re against access to healthcare for all, or because they oppose the concept of ‘fairness.’ In fact, it is usually the exact opposite. People who are not voting for President Obama the next time around are primarily tired of dishonest, self-serving, back-room deals, and of the mediocre quality of the healthcare reform law itself. In 2,700 pages, the ‘Affordable Care Act’ egregiously expands government, distances physicians from their patients with onerous new layers of mandates and regulations, and guts benefits for seniors by slashing Medicare.
Flying the Obamacare Plane
The fight to over-turn, rule unconstitutional, and otherwise derail the ‘Act’ is not a simple ‘rich people’ versus ‘union-members’ argument. The sad reality is that carrying an Obamacare card will not mean you are guaranteed quality medical care by a doctor, as you might expect today. What it will mean for millions of Americans is long waiting times for a diminished number of participating physicians; access to care by a medical school educated, residency-trained, board-certified doctor will become a luxury, not a commonplace occurrence.
Much to the consternation of the die-hard left that believes everything in life should be equal and free for everyone, Obamacare—in its best case scenario—will split the country into two disparate patient groups: the majority who will carry an Obamacare card, and the few who probably don’t need the card or at least can afford to buy the best care available outside of the government system.
The new, euphemistic language of big-government liberals is to replace the word ‘doctor’ with the word ‘provider.’ The idea of a medical system run like Amtrak and the U.S. Postal Service should be a daunting one; the idea of an airline industry built around ‘flying technicians’ instead of ‘pilots’ should be horrifying.
The Obamacare precept of legislatively allowing (and promoting) the practice of medicine by non-physicians should be utterly deplorable, and yet an expanding army of technicians, assistants, and nurses will be the very ‘providers’ elevated to see all of the additional people waiting in line patiently with an Obamacare card in hand.
Presidential Leadership and Re-engineering Healthcare
Perhaps Presidential candidate Gingrich articulates the anti-Obamacare message better than most. Newt Gingrich would be a reliable architect to deconstruct Obamacare and replace it with something else—something which would actually work! In the January 19th 2012 CNN Republican Primary debate, Speaker Gingrich articulated the most important lesson about the Obama care fiasco, and it was said in only one line where he admitted that he had made a mistake in previously supporting some type of individual mandate. Mr. Gingrich knows that healthcare reform is a complex business and that many voices must be shared in its formulation; that is why he (and the other Republican challengers) would place physicians at the center of the process to re-engineer reform, instead of marginalizing them.
A recent article by a medical group allied with the President and the American Medical Association touts the fact that “doctors [indeed] do not hate Obama care,” and yet it summarily discounts its own credibility by not mentioning the AMA’s huge conflict of interest on this matter. With a true membership of closer to 15% only of practicing doctors in America, the AMA survives and thrives on the sale of its life and disability insurance plans, and on the not so insignificant tens of millions of dollars it reins in annually ($72 million to be exact in 2010 alone) due to government-sanctioned and government-protected copyright royalties on the use of all medical billing codes.
If the AMA and their associated member societies truly allowed themselves to compete for membership, loyalty, and support for the right to speak for America’s doctors (without using essentially taxpayer money to buy the perception otherwise), they would come in last place. The AMA represents mostly their own self-serving financial interests. Promoting themselves now as a patient-advocacy group, the AMA is neither being honest, nor promoting the best interests of patients or physicians in its open support for Obamacare.
Whoever becomes the Republican candidate to challenge the President in November must understand what Newt Gingrich has articulated with character and eloquence—leading is not about promoting ideology, it’s about configuring ideals into pragmatic solutions. Fixing the ‘Affordable Care Act’ mess will require an immense project that restores proper focus on the sacred doctor-patient relationship, and systematically dismantles the dangerous community-based rationing houses known as ‘medical homes’/ Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs).
ACOs will serve to prop up disingenuous local ‘leaders’ to essentially rule on everything from patient treatment options, prescriptions drug availability, and doctor pay. Instead of empowering quality to free up the market of qualified medical doctors, ACOs will try to pick winners and losers in a government-sponsored fiasco a la the stimulus package bailouts. ACOs will require the government to transfer private patient records to new, regional storage houses in what some fear will be a blatant violation of the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
A recent study, released just this past week, by the Congressional Budget Office calls into question whether newly mandated Medicare ‘pay for performance’ schemes have improved quality or reduced costs at all. Many feel this is just a foreshadowing of the dubious results which will be delivered under Obamacare. If America gets it wrong in refashioning healthcare reform, and Obamacare restrictions on patients and physicians onerously limit legal and practical options to choose plans and participation levels, then we will have lost a fundamental value as supposedly ‘free’ citizens. Some fear that doctors will no longer be able to opt-out of Medicare/Obamacare participation, and it appears that some patients are already challenging restrictions on their ability to do just that.
Legal Challenges to the Medicare/Government Yoke on Freedom
In 1993, employees of the Department of Health and Human Services modified the Procedure Operations Manual to mandate Social Security enrollees to participate in Medicare Part A. The new rules called into question the right of Americans to receive Social Security benefits while retaining the freedom to disenroll or simply not join Medicare. The concern of many was that it should be an inherent right of citizens to ‘decouple’ their Social Security plans from their medical/Medicare insurance. In fact for Brian Hall and co-plaintiffs, the government stated they would have to surrender and repay all Social Security benefits received to date in order to get out of their Medicare plan. In response to this, on October 8, 2008, plaintiffsHall, Randall and Rogers, with the help of attorney Kent Masterson Brown filed a legal challenge in the US District Court of Washington, DC. Ultimately, two more plaintiffs, Kraus and Armey, joined the lawsuit.
On March 16, 2011, Judge Collyer’s rulingfound in favor of the government and ruled that an “entitlement could be a requirement.” As the Fund for Personal Liberty so eloquently describes: “denying Social Security benefits to Americans who have paid payroll taxes their entire life because they wish to avoid a government insurance program creates a de facto individual mandate to participate in Medicare. It also denies the freedom of contract and choice to all but the wealthiest retirees.”
Senator Jim DeMint (Retirement Freedom Act, June 30, 2011) and Representative Sam Johnson (Medicare Beneficiary Freedom to Choose Act of 2011, HR-1051, March 11, 2011) have sponsored legislation that, if passed, would achieve the same goal of the Hall lawsuit.
Quoting from the Johnson’s bill: “Medicare Beneficiary Freedom to Choose Act of 2011- Amends title XVIII (Medicare) to revise requirements for the use of private contracts by Medicare beneficiaries under which no Medicare claims shall be made. Requires any such contract to be in writing and signed by the Medicare beneficiary. Allows individuals to choose to opt out of the Medicare part A (Hospital Insurance), and makes them eligible for health savings accounts.”
The individual, group, and legal challenges to government-controlled medical care fall squarely within the rights of all Americans to demand freedom and choice in their healthcare decisions. For those who will unwaveringly carry the Obamacare banner because of an ideological marriage to the President’s philosophy of governance–or because they feel their union rights or job security will be threatened–there is no dissuasive argument strong enough to change minds. For those who value the quality of their medical care, and would like to find ways to allow all Americans to reap the benefits of our health care delivery system, please consider that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act law is not only unwieldy and deeply flawed, but that it is also a direct threat to the goals is was purportedly crafted to achieve.
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Bill Gunderson 
