Obamacare: Promises, Promises, and a Prescription for Change

The utopium of the people.

Professor Arthur Case (1896-1946),  commenting on the vague promises of the welfare state

Promises, promises

Title of 1958 Broadway Musical

December 9, 2012 -  Obamacare has been a story of broken promises – promises to lower costs and premiums, promises to keep your health plan and your doctor,  promises to improve access and quality,  promises to develop a nationwide interoperative and transparent health information system,  promises to “save” money by increasing hospital and doctor quality and efficiency,  promises to facilitate access to physicians and hospitals, and promises to explain the health care law in terms the public can understand. So far, it has failed on all counts.

As a reaction to these broken promises,  a number of organizations have asked for Obamacare to be repealed, an unlikely prospect now that the President has been re-elected.   These organizations, listed below,  continue their effort to defund and to demystify the health law, to turn back its more egregious and injurious provisions (the Independent Payment Advisory Board, the slew of regulations,  the medical device profit tax, the uncertainties  it imposes on businesses) .

These organizations include:

·         American Healthcare Education Coalition

·         Change Board Recertification

·         Citizens’ Council For Health Freedom

·         Obamacare Watch

·         Galen.org

·         National Center for Policy Analysis - Healthcare

·         Health Reform Hub

·         The Heritage Foundation

·         Defend Your Healthcare

·         The Cato Institute on Healthcare Reform

·         Benjamin Rush Society

·         Pacific Research Institute

·         Patients For Fair Compensation

·         e21 - Economic Policies for the 21st Century

·         Docs4patientcare.org

Doc4Patientcare.org

Just a word, if I may, about Docs4patientcare.org.  Dr. Hal Scherz, a pediatric urologist in Atlanta, developed the website. founded Doctors for Patient Care, and serves as its president.   He has been working steadily on the site and his company for the last 5 years and now has more than 3000 physician members with chapters in 15 states  dedicated to showing the flaws and consequences of Obamacare and offering a prescription for change to a system more in keeping with American medicine and American culture values of clinical choice and freedom.

It is one thing to offer vague government promises for  health care reform; it is quite another to offer a concrete prescription for a cure of the current system. 

Here, in outline form, with a preface ans summary of prescription for cure, and what Dr. Scherz and his organization recommends  needs to be done to fix the system.

Preface

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) neither protects patients, nor does it lead to affordable care. The two fundamental problems that drive up the cost of health care in the United States are the lack of true competition in the health insurance industry and the isolation of physicians and patients from the true costs of health care. Rather than addressing these problems, ObamaCare aggravates them by limiting choices of insurance, increasing regulation, and centralizing decision making. It is the wrong prescription for health care reform in America. A majority of Americans, particularly physicians, recognize this and thus oppose the new health care law and support its repeal.

Docs 4 Patient Care is an organization of physicians dedicated to the preservation of the doctor-patient relationship. What follows is our prescription for health care reform in the United States. Our primary concern is the health and well-being of our patients. An additional concern is the health and well-being of our country –physically and financially. Accompanying each of the following eight recommendations is a rationale. These recommendations are intended to serve as a framework on which responsible legislation can be constructed.

Prescription

1. Increase competition by allowing individuals to purchase health insurance across state lines.

2. Equalize the tax treatment of money spent for health insurance by employers and individuals.

3. Encourage the Health Savings Account qualified High Deductible Health Plan (HSA qualified HDHP) model as the basic structural health insurance model across the entire spectrum of health insurance options by broadening allowable use.

4. Promote transparency in medical costs.

5. Encourage medical liability reform.

6. Transform Medicare into a defined contribution program.

7. Restructure Medicaid to assist low-income families to purchase health insurance.

8. Encourage pooling.

Summary

The recently passed ObamaCare takes the control of health care decisions out of the hands of patients and places it into a dramatically expanded federal bureaucracy. This top-down, centralized control of health care has everything to do with power, but nothing to do with health care.

We believe in the capacity of our patients to make the right decisions, and we support the rights of our patients to make their own health care decisions. That is why we oppose ObamaCare and support its repeal.

The physicians at Docs 4 Patient Care present a prescription for health care reform that addresses the root causes of the problems that have developed in our health care system over the last 50 years. These reforms relieve the federal government of its role as a health insurance provider, prevent the intrusion of the government in the health care free market, and place patients in control of their own health care decisions.

ObamaCare is the wrong prescription for health care reform. Let’s get it right this time.

Tweet: Obamacare, now in force for 2 3/4 years, is a story of broken promises that need to be fixed, clarified, and amended to reflect reality.