Negative Quiddity: Obama Care

Although this cartoon is rather good sentimental propaganda, it is on the wrong side of what is actually good for Americans.

ESSENTIAL MISTAKES OF OBAMA CARE

I

It’s unconstitutional. The requirement that every adult American acquire medical insurance or face a dollar penalty on their tax return is a power grab and unconscionable extension of the commerce clause of the Constitution. The commerce clause does not apply to refraining from economic activity except with respect to farmers’ federally guaranteed programs to grow or not-grow food.

II

It turns the IRS into cops and the annual tax return into a search conducted without probable cause. That’s not the way due process works. Under due process, there should be a reason to ask questions before the government snoops around looking for illegal activity. The revised tax return in accordance with post-2014 Obama Care constitutes a warrantless search shotgunned to every taxpayer with required answers under penalty of perjury. This is a central move toward the state having all power and the citizen having none.

III

It was written by lobbyists who grabbed what power and whatever pieces of the pie that they could. Especially, lawyers, pharmaceutical houses and insurance companies wrote Obama Care (check Matt Tiabbi’s articles and comments in Rolling Stone in August and September of 2009). Your Obama Care "benefits" in Nebraska are different than they are in any other state because the Democratic Senator sat on the fence and insisted on special treatment. Later on in the process, the drafters cunningly double-crossed the pharmaceutical companies. Result: once implemented, there is going to be less money spent on new drugs, and there will be fewer new cures. Tort reform to reduce malpractice cases and expenses was explicitly turned down by Democrats in the Senate. Lawyers are a big part of the Democratic party – a dishonest ambulance chaser (himself now being prosecuted) was the Democratic Vice presidential nominee in 2004.

IV

The result of II and III is an insanely and needlessly complex bill that will cost tens of billions to administer every year. The president said, while it was being considered that it would cost "not one dime" and be completely paid for by "Medicare savings." Here is a professionally-prepared graph of Obama Care – see if you can find any savings and efficiencies on this bill prepared by hell-bound lobbyists:

http://www.house.gov/brady/pdf/Press_Packet.pdf

I got the main graphic printed out in color at 400% of normal size. I then had it framed. I gave it to my private physician for a Christmas present. He was horrified by it but fascinated. He took it home and had it framed, where he showed it to other doctors.

V

The United States has a public debt that exceeds its gross domestic product. This is reversible, normally, only for a nation which has won a war and, in the aftermath of victory, pays down its debts. As a retired CPA, including service as a state auditor and state fraud examiner, I promise you that we cannot afford Obama Care, because we cannot continue to borrow the money from overseas required to fund it for any
significant period of time at all.

VI

The level of care given to individuals under Obama Care will suck. I know this because as a ten-year veteran of the Navy, the first thing I did afterward was go to a dentist and have my teeth saved. I went to a doctor to have my arthritis treated, though it was not recognized as a problem by government doctors. I am now retired and living in a town with a Veterans Affairs hospital. I also have medical care from my civilian tenure with an employer and the private medical insurance. I pay to see the VA (because I’m not poor enough to get free care), and in situation after situation I retreat to a private doctor and pay for important additional care. Oh, yeah, and additional medicines. There are certain medications that are patented and well prescribed because so effective (Advair for one). The government won’t prescribe it. That’s called "rationing." The government won’t pay for a root canal and crown either, even if you have a throat ulcer and need to chew well to get food past nine inches of raw throat muscle. Do you get the picture? Government medical care is mediocre – and the VA is the very best of mediocre government medicine. It cuts corners. It pinches. It minimizes. It is the government and therefore can’t be sued, so it doesn’t worry about malpractice. I don’t want to force the cartoon family at the top of this post into mediocre care. It’s inhumane. It’s worse than nothing, especially if you’re under 35.

VII

You’re going to have to wait, and wait, and wait for medical attention under Obama Care because there are going to be fewer doctors. Doctors are begging their children (themselves the group of Americans most likely to become doctors) to consider a technological Ph.D. instead of medicine and, for God’s sake!, stay out of general practice and the responsibilities of being a primary care physician.

VIII

It will push up prices. Medicare has been around since 1965. The government always eventually pays the claims, even most of the fraudulent ones. What does this mean? It is called "cost-push" inflation. Medical care and pharmaceuticals have met or exceeded the rate of inflation for every single year since the advent of Medicare. What will happen with Obama Care? Most inflation, more expensive medical visits, and, therefore, rationing. Guaranteed. The LANGUAGE for RATIONING geriatric care to the elderly is ALREADY part of the boilerplate of the law itself, for example. Again, this is inhumane and worse than nothing.

IX

Medical progress will slow. The pharmaceutical houses and medical equipment-manufacturing firms have already been smeared and singled out by President Obama himself. In the future their profits will be squeezed. They will respond to that by doing less research. There are over 700 rare diseases that a lobbying group in DC looks after and hounds Congress into funding in terms of research. There are another 700 to 800 that are so rare that no research is being funded by private or public funders. With Obama Care, people will die from diseases that could have been cured. This is a certainty.

X

About 50 million Americans are uncovered. A big slice of this group consists of young healthy adults who don’t need insurance. But, yes, there are poor sick Americans with no job or part-time work and no insurance.

What about the 260 million who have insurance? "They like it" and don’t want to switch to the Obama Care rules. It’s being forced down their throat. Do you have compassion for people with the maturity and emotional control to stay where they are as long term employees for the benefits? Only to have those benefits threatened by ambitious politicians? Why should the majority be forced to accept government-mandated mediocrity?

XI

Obama Care is NOT universal. Millions will remain ineligible and uncovered. Additionally, crazy people will stay on the street and avoid the system, even if they are dying from a condition that is curable.

Conclusion

The best possible case scenario that I can come up with is for the Supreme Court to properly defend the Constitution be striking down the mandatory insurance element of the law. The rest will collapse of its own order.

I would suggest that the new Congress, early in 2013, enact legislation for Medicare requiring computerized questionnaires of all patients. Such a questionnaire should be thorough, compete, and portable. When a patient fills out a questionnaire before seeing a physician, that physician is FREE from MALPRACTICE. So, let’s turn the waiting room into a computer lab. Let’s do the exact reverse of what Obama first proposed – his initial approach was to computerize lab results and images. If he knew what he was doing, if he had listened to the right professionals and asked wise questions, he would have known that the DIAGNOSIS should be computerized and made into a database (subject to revision and to further improvements in the questionnaire.)

Questionnaires like this already exist.

You could even build in questions to catch hypochondriacs. This is my second recommendation: on a computer diagnosis of hypochondria, a physician can refuse to treat that patient – period.

The family above in the cartoon could go to a library and access the Internet an answer questions and get a free, world-class diagnosis. That’s halfway to a cure. With no cost. No bureaucrats. No lying to the IRS. No political postures. Even crazy people would use it, the ones who’d rather be out on the street than ask for help from anyone.