Obamacare: Comprehensive Dishonesty, Economic Folly, And Tyranny

"Americans want more affordable health care, but the 2,300-page Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act (PPACA), known more informally as “Obamacare,” is about as likely to provide it as a tornado passing through a junkyard is to assemble a fully functional hospital. Beneath its deceptive title is a massive government intervention into the personal health care choices of most Americans. Its intervention is largely imposed by federal regulation of the health care choices of patients, employers, and health care providers. Buried in the Act are coercive regulations, new taxes, and an unprecedented federal government power-grab of more than one-sixth of the $13.5 trillion American economy.

The regulations requiring end of life counseling, aptly termed “death panels” by discerning critics, were finally removed from the Act, but as recently as this month, the Obama administration has twice tried to make them part of Medicare by bureaucratic stealth. The overall Act remains permeated with the same totalitarian philosophy. Furthermore, Section 3403 of the Act enables federal health care officials to implement such regulations in the future without Congressional approval and amazingly requires a three-fifths supermajority of Congress to overturn them. In addition, the Obama stimulus acts have been used for expanding federal bureaucratic powers.

When federal bureaucrats can decide whether a 65-year-old patient is less valuable to society than a 25-year-old patient and is therefore no longer eligible for more than nominal medical treatments, we will be living in a totalitarian nightmare. Yet this is where the purported $100 billion in Medicare savings claimed by the Obama administration comes from—rationing care away from those whose frailty the government determines may become a costly burden to society. It will not be just the elderly who are vulnerable to fiscal extinction. Anyone from pre-birth and infancy to maturity could see their medical treatments curtailed in the interest of the State. Too much power without accountability to equal or greater power always results in the increasing abuse of power. The Obama administration is attempting to unleash a nightmare of bureaucratic power without accountability.

Dr. C. L. Gray, a Hickory, North Carolina, physician and President of Physicians for Reform, traces the idea that life and health care must be determined by the interests of the State from Plato to Nietzsche to the Third Reich and Dachau. He further suggests that the highhanded mandates and coercive regulations spread throughout the Obamacare Act are derived from the same Statist philosophy. When the God of Scripture is pushed aside, often in the name of religious freedom and diversity, ideas of right and wrong also begin to be pushed aside. The State becomes the only and ultimate moral authority, and all societal objectives must serve the advancement of the State. When applied to health care, this is, according to Gray, a far cry from the humane responsibility and compassion of the Hippocratic Oath. It is also far from the Judeo-Christian ethics and Constitutional protection of human rights affirmed by our nation’s founders.

Obamacare is built upon a foundation of deception and authoritarian Statist philosophy. It is also a blatant vote-buying redistribution of wealth and healthcare. Its provisions favor union over non-union workers. None of its provisions will effectively prevent illegal immigrants from enjoying its redistribution of federal health care benefits, and it is likely to be a strong encouragement to more massive illegal immigration. Its mandates will be crushing to state and local governments already hard-pressed to reduce spending and keep taxes low. Like most expansions of federal welfare, it is likely to be far more costly than estimated. In constant dollars, Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty” programs were estimated to cost $60 billion per year when passed in 1964 and 1965, but they are now costing over $600 billion per year. Vast overruns in federal social spending are not exceptional. They are closer to the rule.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates Obamacare will cost about $100 billion per year. They also estimate that it will cost 800,000 jobs in the first year of implementation. The Heritage Foundation estimates that the cost is likely to be $250 to $300 billion per year. The CBO estimates that the 2011 Federal Budget deficit will be a whopping $1.5 trillion, almost 10 percent of the annual Gross Domestic Product, placing the nation at great risk for high inflation. High inflation is devastating to people on fixed retirement incomes and will also discourage physicians from taking Medicare patients.

Obamacare cannot be fixed by removing a few of its more ridiculous and onerous regulations on small businesses—like requiring them to file 1099 tax forms for all transactions over $600 with other businesses—a requirement, moreover, which has nothing whatsoever to do with health care Affordable quality health care cannot be built on a foundation of deception, demagoguery, and despotism. Moreover, its underlying Statist ideology is an extreme danger to freedom. .

Furthermore, Obamacare excludes the best proposals for improving the quality and reducing the cost of healthcare—allowing health insurance completion across state lines, eliminating outrageous medical malpractice suits and settlements through tort reform, and many others.

Trying to fix Obamacare is like putting a band-aid on gangrene. It is much more likely to kill than heal the patient. If there are a few provisions of Obamacare that when thoroughly examined still seem to have merit, they can be incorporated into a new and less dangerous health care bill or several well examined healthcare bills. Passing smaller well-examined pieces of legislation is much safer than the deception and analytical negligence of so-called comprehensive legislation. Above all, we must reject the dishonesty and fundamentally totalitarian philosophy evident in Obamacare."

Mike Scruggs