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IS IT REALLY TIME TO
SAY ‘NO’ TO HEALTH CARE REFORM?
The heath care juggernaut is being run by anti-democratic ideologues. You doubt this? Where were the congressional hearings?
“This is an issue of vital concern to every American, and I'm glad that
so many are engaged," Obama said Saturday in his weekly radio and Internet
address.
“But it also should be an honest debate, not one dominated by willful
misrepresentations and outright distortions, spread by the very folks who would
benefit the most by keeping things exactly as they are.” Barak Obama as quoted
by NPR
THE HEARINGS DIDN’T
TAKE PLACE because the ruling clique in congress has decided to ram the ‘official’
plan through with as little debate (and as few ‘distracting amendments’) as
possible. In the bargain these leaders
are now applying ruthless pressure on moderate and conservative democrats to
ignore both their constituents and their personal qualms in order to tow the
party line.
The August town hall firestorm was an inevitable
consequence.
HERE ARE THREE
AMENDMENTS TO THE ADMINISTRATION’S HEATH CARE PLAN YOU WILL NOT SEE:
ONE:
PROTECTING A PHYSICIAN’S RIGHT TO HAVE A PRIVATE PRACTICE.
“No physician or credentialed health care provider may be
prohibited or prevented from or penalized for performing medical services
outside the scope and/or coverage of the government or government approved
plans for any private patient, patients or party on a fee for service basis.”
TWO:
PROTECTING A PATIENT’S RIGHT TO PRIVATELY SEEK CARE OUTSIDE THE
GOVERNMENT SYSTEM
“No patient or other individual seeking medical care,
services or consultation may be prohibited or prevented from or penalized
for privately contracting with a
physician or other health care provider for any medical prescription,
treatment, procedure or consultation, whether or not enrolled in any government
sponsored, approved or regulated plan or other health care provider system.”
THREE:
PROTECTING THE INTEGRITY OF A PHYSICIAN’S INDIVIDUAL MEDICAL JUDGMENT;
SAFEGUARDING THE HIPPOCRATIC OATH.
“No physician, nurse or other heath care provider working
under the direction of such physician may be penalized, discouraged or prevented
in any way by the government, its agents, agencies, departments, bureaus or
commissions, for the exercise of his or her clinical/medical judgments that, in
the physician’s independent professional judgment, are in accordance with the
Hippocratic Oath. Any medical doctrine
to the contrary that is contained in the Act or promulgated by officials
proceeding under the act shall be null and void.”
WHAT
IS GOING ON?
Why to I believe this to be the case? The current congressional leadership is
committed not to allow any amendments that will dilute or impede the march to
mandatory single payer (i.e., government) care, especially when those amendments might actually pass.
If you doubt this, I invite you to take a look at the record
so far. The following amendments were
either blocked at their inception or were defeated at the recommendation of the
current congressional leadership:
Amendment from Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) would have preserves
Americans’ freedom to choose & keep the coverage they like. i.e., high
deductible plans, Health Savings Account (HSA)
Amendment from Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) would have
guaranteed that nothing in the bill could prevent individuals from keeping
their current health benefit plans.
Amendment from Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), Rep. Jim Matheson
(D-UT), and Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) would have
allowed HSAs plans (the medical savings accounts
model with a catastrophic coverage supplement) in the bill’s definition of a
“qualified health benefits plan.”
Amendment from Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) would have allowed us to
keep the insurance we like by opting out of the government-run ‘option’.
Amendment from Rep. Dave Reichert (R-WA) would have us to
continue to enroll in private individual market health plans. [Note the
president only said we could remain in our existing plans as long as they are
offered.]
Amendment from Rep. Charles Boustany
(R-LA) would have stopped the Health and Human Services Secretary from
forcing providers to participate in the government-run plan (Democrats defeated this amendment: 25-16)
Amendment from Rep. Wally Herger (R-CA) would have stopped
the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) from using the Act to make
coverage determinations.
Amendment from Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX) would have eliminated
the public plan whenever enrollees suffered longer wait times than in private
health plans, allowing them to switch to private health plans.
Amendment from Rep. Dean Heller (R-NV) would have required
that the government actually verify that only citizens can access federal
health care.
In other actions, the congressional leadership has prevented
measures stopping bureaucrats from making personal medical decisions for
patients; waiving the employer mandate if it will cause layoffs, worker salary
cuts, or reductions in hiring; creating small business health plans; requiring
the government-run plan to operate under the same rules as private health plans;
preventing seniors from being stripped of their health care choices, keep the
federal government from choosing “favored” physicians, or allow states to opt
out.
Several surveys of this sorry record of legislative
manipulation (in blatant disregard of popular sentiment) have been posted at
the following LINKS:
Okay: What is REALLY going on here?
There is a clear pattern. The new congress, heady with its power to override the opposition, has begun to curtail debate on all of the high priority issues by choking off the amendment process. It is in connection with an amendment to a pending bill that debate is allowed. In the health care agenda, it is crystal clear that the minor amendments that do not slow down the march to a single payer model are tolerated, but nothing else will be allowed to get in the way.
A very determined subset of the liberal establishment has
decided the “the time has come” to shoehorn everyone who is now insured into an
inferior and inevitably underfunded health care system (the HMO from hell) in
the quixotic attempt to produce more “equity” among all.
Pursuit of this single minded (and I must add, simple
minded) objective will bankrupt our heath care system and degrade the overall
quality of care. It will do far more
harm and far less good than directly addressing the needs of the poorest among
us.
Given the intransigence of the congressional leadership,
egged on by White House staff, the best thing to do is simply block the effort
completely until such times as the ‘reform’ proponents, the White House and
congressional leadership agree to an orderly, thorough and segmented debate,
during which any bill is open to all amendments.
Three subject matter groupings seem logical here: [A] expanding
coverage opportunities for non-indigent persons who are being rejected for
preexisting conditions; [B] finding ways to provide out patient care for the
indigent and near-indigent throngs who fill urban emergency rooms with
non-emergency cases; [C] exploring innovating, low cost insurance options (like
the blend between catastrophic care insurance and cost-shared pay for services
models) that individuals and small businesses can readily join. But that kind of orderly debate, accompanied
by post-partisan congressional hearings has been trumped by an ideology-driven
power play.
We are presented with a faux emergency and fake crisis that is nothing more than a blatant attempt to exploit a fleeting opportunity to ram a poorly constructed piece of radical legislation past the normal checks and balances.
Is it really time to say ‘no’ to health care reform? Of course not.
But the time has arrived to give this group of manipulative, deceptive and deluded would-be-reformers the one message that will send this sorry mess of a project back to the starting gate where saner minds will have a chance to be heard:
NOT THIS BILL! NOT THIS SESSION! NOT THIS PROCESS!
JBG