With the 2011 and 2012 budgets occupying much of the news these days, coverage of attempts to defund and dismantle Obamacare by the Republicans have been relegated to low priority and interest by the liberal “mainstream” media. We must make sure that the anathema of Obamacare be relentlessly publicized.
This dangerous, disastrous and extraordinarily expensive government take-over of healthcare and usurpation of our rights must be abrogated. The American people have unequivocally voiced their antipathy of this government confiscation. They know what this will lead to and on virtually all accounts, it is extremely bad.
Socialized medicine has been an abysmal failure worldwide and there were and are so many models that exemplify this. Canada and Great Britain are quintessential examples of this. Both countries are have been seeking radical changes in order to improve their abject care and bankrupting costs.
We must continue to keep the pressure on our politicians for the repeal of Obamacare. This corruptly passed (and probably unconstitutional) legislation was all about power and control by the Democrats – and not about costs or access.
Pain And Suffering
Investor’s Business Daily 04/06/2011
Health Care: Recall the complaints that the U.S. is the only developed nation in the world that doesn't provide universal medicine? So how's that arrangement working elsewhere? Rather poorly, particularly in Britain.
Agitators for government health care can no longer, as they did at one time, hold up the British system as the model the U.S. should follow. They've learned to stay away — and for good reason. The system has followed the path that all socialist systems must follow: It is breaking under its own weight.
The nation with the reputation for rotten dental care is quickly developing a reputation for delays in medical treatment. "Devastating and cruel" is how British surgeons are now describing the long waits for operations.
It's the National Health Service's way, reports the BBC, of finding nearly $33 billion in efficiency savings by 2015. To achieve those savings, knee and hip replacements apparently have been limited by the bureaucratic rationing teams.
"We've started to get reports over the last nine months that access to these services is being restricted," Peter Kay, president of the British Orthopaedic Association, told the BBC. Of the 692 surgeons contacted by the broadcaster, 106 said "routine operations had been put on hold in their area. Others described new limits on when patients qualify for hip or knee replacements."
Meanwhile, "152 specialists said patients now have to be more disabled or in greater pain, and 118 told us hip and knee surgery had been regarded as a procedure of low priority."
The consequences of trying to treat everyone through the government go far beyond the pain and suffering of missed joint-replacement surgery. Sometimes, the wages are death.
That's how it ended for Margaret Hutchon, who happened to be a former NHS director. She died last month, the Daily Mail reported, "after waiting for nine months for an operation — at her own hospital" (emphasis ours).
She "had been waiting since last June for a followup stomach operation," but "her appointments to go under the knife were cancelled four times and she barely regained consciousness after finally having surgery."
Not only are treatments being delayed, so is NHS legislation that would, among other provisions, make the system less bureaucratic and increase private-sector involvement.
The political left, which clings tenaciously to government programs that permit the exercise of power over others, has demagogued the legislation, sounded the dreaded "privatization" alarm and won a delay.
Britons should be outraged. If the government taxes them to fund universal care, they should get the care. If the government can't do the job — which clearly it can't — it should get out of the business of meddling in people's lives and let everyone take care of his or her own health care.
Americans should be outraged as well, because a Democratic Congress and White House have forced on them a program that will be no more successful than the British health care wreck.
Yes, ObamaCare is an unpopular law with low approval ratings. But the antipathy toward it and those who engineered its passage over constitutional limitations and public opposition is not as intense as it should be.
Pressure for ObamaCare's repeal should be so sharp that official Washington will be left with no other option. If not, the British health care problems of today will be America's health care problems tomorrow.
As anticipated, it appears that a significant number of physicians will either be leaving the medical field or significantly changing their method of practice including substantially reducing their hours worked as a consequence of Obamacare. The direct results of this are also quite predictable: there will be far greater difficulty or inability to obtain medical care, long waiting times and rationing. Concomitantly, the quality of care in most phases will be drastically reduced.
The full implementation of Obamacare must be thwarted otherwise the best medical system in the world will be destroyed.
We must repeatedly make our elected officials in Washington aware of our total opposition to the legislation and assure that it is completely repealed. Any attempt to rework it or make modifications will not be acceptable.
Report: Health Care Law Causing Mass Exodus of Doctors
Bit by bit more details are coming out regarding the pernicious nature of Obamacare which add even more reasons why it MUST be repealed.
COMPLETELY!
There are no minor changes which can miraculously transform this unconstitutional government controlled Leviathan into an acceptable system. It is so massive, invasive, controlling, punitive, costly and destructive that only its complete eradication and starting with a clean slate would be acceptable and prudent.
The new Republican controlled House must address this as their first priority along with making the Bush tax cuts permanent.
Repeal—Now More than Ever
Yuval Levin November 8, 2010
When the Democrats passed their health care reform legislation in March, they assured one another that the law would grow increasingly popular as its contents became better known and its early provisions began to take effect. Seven months later—as those contents have become better known and those provisions have begun to take effect—the law only looks worse, in both substantive and political terms. Its disastrous consequences are already being felt. Voters clearly know it. The case for repealing Obamacare and starting over has never been stronger.
The fundamentals of that case remain what they were back in March. The law will spend a trillion dollars over the next decade and increase taxes by half a trillion; create a massive new entitlement on top of those that are already threatening to bankrupt the government; impose a vast array of new rules and mandates on providers, insurers, employers, and consumers; insert the government in countless new ways between doctors and patients; increase the burden of Medicaid costs for the states; and cause millions of middle class families to lose the employer-based insurance they have today and pay even higher premiums.
Rather than reducing costs, Obamacare will increase national health expenditures by more than $200 billion—according to the Obama administration’s own actuary. Rather than pave the way for entitlement reform, it will take the resources that future policymakers might have used to improve the structure of Medicare and use them instead to construct a new entitlement that will grow more expensive more quickly than Medicare itself. And all of this to increase the portion of Americans who have health insurance from just under 85 percent today to about 95 percent in 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. There are far better ways to contain costs and so increase access to coverage—above all, by increasing the control consumers have over how their health care dollars are spent. Opponents of Obamacare proposed a variety of such approaches this year.
All this we knew, and said, last spring. But today, we know even more about why the law must be repealed. We know with far greater certainty, for instance, that Obamacare will make it very attractive for both large and small employers to stop providing insurance coverage, thereby sending millions more into the subsidized exchanges than the CBO accounted for, and thus sharply increasing the cost of the law and with it the deficit. We know that Obamacare will make it more difficult for many providers of nonstandard insurance (like colleges insuring young students, or employers providing bare-bones plans to part-time workers) to offer coverage. We know that it will drive up premiums—since it has already begun to do so. We know that it will create massive administrative headaches for businesses and consumers—for instance, requiring companies to file 1099 forms with the IRS for any vendor whom they pay more than $600 in a given year, and requiring a prescription to buy over-the-counter drugs with money from flex spending or health savings accounts.
We know that the people who designed the bill and the people charged with implementing it were not aware of a lot of this. Unanticipated consequences usually take a while to present themselves. But in the case of this law, some nasty ones have already become apparent, and it seems that more appear with every passing week. Just imagine the unanticipated complications that would ensue if the legislation’s enormous and unwieldy new entitlement, Medicaid expansion, exchanges, subsidies, rules, and restrictions were to come on line in full.
We also know how the law’s champions would respond to such problems—with a mix of strident bullying and daft denial. When some companies began to report the added costs Obamacare would impose on them—reports which are required by law—some congressional Democrats threatened to launch hearings to harangue them. When insurance companies explained that the new law was forcing them to increase some premiums, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius sent them a letter warning that the government will not look kindly upon such honesty in the future.
All of these ominous signs point in one clear direction. To avert a monumental disaster and enact real health care reform, Obamacare must be repealed. The law’s design—which points away from consumer-directed health care and toward an entitlement model in essentially every detail—makes tinkering at the edges impossible. Real reform first requires wholesale repeal. And it cannot come too soon.
In this video of a presentation which was in support of Senate candidate Dr. Rob Steele, national health care reform expert Dr. David Janda explains some of the hidden but pernicious mandates inherent in the Obamacare legislation as well as associated ones that had even been in the stimulus bill. What he reveals will shock everyone and provide even more impetus and support for the repeal and de-funding of the government takeover of healthcare.
Many of the Democrats who are either up for re-election or are seeking political office for the first time are claiming that they oppose much of Obamacare and plan to fix it if elected/re-elected.
Don’t believe any of this rhetoric. There is an ulterior motive to these specious statements: to win election by whatever it takes. After that, expect most of these Democrats to toe the party line, either by coercion or personal convictions, and therefore not repeal Obamacare.
Only the Republicans can be trusted to attempt to repeal or defund Obamacare.
Vote Republican in November if you want to fight Obamacare … and to take back our country from the arrogant, elitist and radical Democratic politicians.
Dear Patients: Vote to Repeal ObamaCare Don't believe Democrats who promise to fix the bill once they're re-elected.
By Hal Scherz
Facing a nationwide backlash, Democratic congressional candidates have a new message for voters: We know you don't like ObamaCare, so we'll fix it.
This was the line offered by Democrat Mark Critz, who won a special election in Pennsylvania's 12th congressional district after expressing opposition to the law and promising to mend it—but not to repeal it. As a doctor I know something about unexpected recoveries, and this latest attempt to rescue ObamaCare from repeal needs to be taken seriously.
For Democrats who voted for ObamaCare, this tactic is an escape route, a chance to distance themselves from the president with a vague promise to fix health-care reform in the next Congress.
To counter this election-year ruse, my colleagues and I at Docs4PatientCare are enlisting thousands of doctors in an unorthodox and unprecedented action. Our patients have always expected a certain standard of care from their doctors, which includes providing them with pertinent information that may affect their quality of life. Because the issue this election is so stark—literally life and death for millions of Americans in the years ahead—we are this week posting a "Dear Patient" letter in our waiting rooms.
The letter states in unambiguous language what the new law means:
"Dear Patient: Section 1311 of the new health care legislation gives the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services and her appointees the power to establish care guidelines that your doctor must abide by or face penalties and fines. In making doctors answerable in the federal bureaucracy this bill effectively makes them government employees and means that you and your doctor are no longer in charge of your health care decisions. This new law politicizes medicine and in my opinion destroys the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship that makes the American health care system the best in the world."
Our doctor's letter points out that, in addition to "badly exacerbating the current doctor shortage," ObamaCare will bring "major cost increases, rising insurance premiums, higher taxes, a decline in new medical techniques, a fall-off in the development of miracle drugs as well as rationing by government panels and by bureaucrats like passionate rationing advocate Donald Berwick that will force delays of months or sometimes years for hospitalization or surgery."
We cite the brute facts of ObamaCare's passage:
"Despite countless protests by doctors and overwhelming public opposition—up to 60% of Americans opposed this bill—the current party in control of Congress pushed this bill through with legal bribes and Chicago style threats and is determined now to resist any 'repeal and replace' efforts. This doctor's office is non-partisan—always has been, always will be. But the fact is that every Republican voted against this bad bill while the Democratic Party leadership and the White House completely dismissed the will of the people in ruthlessly pushing through this legislation."
Then we address the Democrats' evasive campaign maneuver:
"In the face of voter anger some Democratic candidates are now trying to make a cosmetic retreat, calling for minor modifications or pretending they are opposed to government-run medicine. Once the election is over, however, they will vote with their party bosses against repealing this bill."
The letter's final lines are the most important:
"Please remember when you vote this November that unless the Democratic Party receives a strong negative message about this power grab our health care system will never be fixed and the doctor patient relationship will be ruined forever."
This message is going out to an electorate that is already frustrated over what they see happening to health care. Missouri voters rejected ObamaCare overwhelmingly in August, voting by a margin of 71%-29% to reject the federal requirement that all individuals purchase health insurance. Democratic pollster Douglas Schoen has assessed that ObamaCare is "a disaster" for Democrats. And around the country many little-noticed primaries have reflected voter rage—including the Republican primary victory of surgeon, political newcomer, and advocate of repeal Daniel Benishek in Michigan's first district.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration's damage-control efforts have fallen flat. The latest round of pro-ObamaCare television spots targeting the elderly and starring veteran actor Andy Griffith have not only failed to move the polling numbers. They have caused five U.S. Senators to ask for an investigation of the ads as a violation of federal laws barring the use of tax dollars ($750,000) for campaign purposes.
America's doctors have millions of personal interactions each week with patients. We have political power. And we intend to use it by working to defeat those who have disrupted and gravely endangered the best health-care system in the world.
Dr. Scherz, a pediatric urological surgeon at Georgia Urology and Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, serves on the faculty of Emory University Medical School and is president and cofounder of Docs4PatientCare.
Implementation of some pernicious components of Obamacare are starting to occur and must be expeditiously thwarted in order to avert destruction of the world’s best healthcare system and unleash a rapidly escalating death rate. This essentially began with “president?” Obama’s recess appointment of Dr. Donald Berwick to head the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services. He is a staunch advocate of the rationing of health care and uses the British system as a model.
He must be thwarted in his efforts. This starts with voting in a Republican majority in Congress in the November elections.
Death Panels Begin As Reform Takes Shape
Investor’s Business Daily 08/18/2010
Medicine: After the recess appointment of a Medicare and Medicaid head, an FDA panel drops its endorsement of a widely used cancer drug. Another FDA-approved cancer therapy may not be paid for. It begins.
It didn't take long for the health care philosophy of Dr. Donald Berwick, President Obama's choice to head the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services, and an appointee we have labeled a "one-man death panel," to have an effect.
Berwick is an admirer of Britain's National Health Service and its National Institute for Clinical Excellence, with the Orwellian-acronym NICE.
"NICE," Berwick has said, "is extremely effective and a conscientious, valuable and — importantly — knowledge-building system." But NICE is really a system of rationing, through a bureaucratic formula for "cost-effectiveness," that has rushed untold numbers of Britons to an early grave.
Avastin, the marketing name for the drug bevacizumab, is the world's best-selling cancer drug. Used mainly to treat colon cancer, it was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2006 after it was found that by cutting the blood flow to tumors, it helped in treating breast cancer.
An estimated 17,500 American women are treated with the drug each year. It is effective, having been shown to extend life by at least 20 months, but it is not cheap.
Under the new "cost-effectiveness" philosophy of this administration, an FDA advisory panel has voted 12-to-1 to drop the endorsement of Avastin for breast cancer treatment. The FDA usually follows advisory panel recommendations, and a final decision will be announced Sept. 17. If approval of the drug, approved for colon, lung, kidney and brain cancer, is revoked for breast cancer, it is likely that insurers would drop that coverage.
In a joint letter sent to the FDA and key congressional lawmakers last week, Susan Komen of the Cure and the Ovarian Cancer National Alliance (OCNA) urged that Avastin continue to be approved for metastatic breast cancer patients and warned of the message this "decision sends about drug development for women with advanced breast cancer."
Breast cancer, the second most common cause of cancer death among U.S. women, claimed 40,000 lives last year. Komen says the decision to use Avastin should be made between a woman and her doctor after a thoughtful consideration of the benefits and risks. We agree.
The Obama administration's health care overhaul is all about cost and little about care. Berwick has opined: "We can make a sensible social decision and say, 'Well, at this point, to have access to a particular additional benefit (new drug or medical intervention) is so expensive that our taxpayers have better use for those funds."
In other words, the government will decide whether treating you and extending your life is worth it.
OCNA is also concerned whether Berwick's CMS, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, will pay for Provenge, a vaccine to treat the recurrence of prostate cancer, and at what rate. The vaccine is made from a patient's blood cells with cancer cells and an immune-boosting substance. A three-dose course of the immunotherapy is estimated to cost $93,000.
There's a conflict in mission statements. The FDA is supposed to approve drugs that are safe and effective. The CMS statute says it must pay for treatments that are reasonable and necessary. Provenge is ominously still under review by CMS.
"The decision is not whether or not we will ration care," Berwick says. "The decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open."
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