Republicans are exulting over the defeat of Martha Coakley in Massachusetts and the seeming defeat of the “healthcare reform” bill. To quote Senator Coburn, “This bill will be turned into toilet paper,” and “The American people stopped this bill today.”
Even so, the Progressive movement is ramping up efforts to salvage the “healthcare reform” that the voters just trounced. And some Republicans, along with the AMA, support them.
Scott Brown, although he promised to be the “41st Senator” for stopping the bill in its current form, is saying “I think it’s important for everyone to get some form of health care, to offer a basic plan for everybody I think is important”.
The AMA is on the record as supporting the Senate bill that passed. On Jan 21, its officials, along with AARP, sent another letter to Congress on one issue: repealing the sustained growth rate (SGR) formula for price-fixing, which would result in its replacement by some other formula for price-fixing. And MoveOn.org is launching an emergency campaign to “save real health care reform.”
MoveOn.org plans to point out, in full-page newspaper ads, that there is still the chance to “pass an even stronger bill, including the popular public option,” with only 51 Senate votes in a budget-reconciliation package (the “nuclear option”). It claims that the election results signify that the Senate did not go far enough!
AAPS states that it’s NOT “back to the drawing board” to tweak thousand-page monstrosities. They need to be killed.
The key idea, which will lead inevitably to a complete government takeover, is the unconstitutional mandate, on private persons and businesses, to buy insurance.
The federal government has NO Constitutional authority to force people to buy a certain product as a condition of being alive. Nor does it have the Constitutional authority to “provide healthcare for all,” to dictate the terms of private contracts (including insurance contracts), to dictate the way in which physicians keep their records, to require reporting patient data to government, to define what constitutes a “preventive service” or “quality of care,” or to perform myriad other functions in the bill.
The bill does not “reform” insurance—it abolishes true insurance. It would make it impossible for a person ever to pay a market price for insurance—i.e. a risk-based premium—while forcing all to participate in a collectivized, government-approved prepayment scheme for government-approved benefits.
Both Democrats and Republicans need to hear that the voters have spoken: they are opposed to the misbegotten “reform.” They are sick of back-room deals, bribes, deceit, and treachery. They want simple, straightforward, transparent bills that respect the law of the land, the U.S. Constitution, and proceed through an orderly legislative process with full hearings and debate.
Stay tuned for announcements on congressional doings, and for AAPS action plans, next week.
I am a practicing physician of over 30 years. I am an internist and emergency medicine doctor. I am aware of every specialty in medicine practiced in America. I am aware of most new medications that come onto the scene daily, and those medications that are still being researched. I am aware of the latest surgical procedures that cardiovascular surgeons are performing. I am aware of the latest cancer treatment programs and cancer treatment drugs. I am aware of the research that is being done in all of our great medical schools and medical centers throughout the United States. I am aware of the many people that come to America to have specialized surgery and/or treatment every day. There is more…..much more!!!! But, I said all of that to say that if the corrupt politicians in Washington, D.C. are successful in producing a bill that forces government controlled medicine onto our society, then all of thos things that I have mentioned will be a thing of the past….a thing for history books to remember……something that you can tell your grandchildren……because the extremely well managed medicine of the private sector will be a thing of the past. I am not being dramatic……America will no longer shine as the great healing nation…..hope will vanish…..tears will flow…..people will lose heart…..desperation will set in…….and everyone will want to know why they cannot get medical treatment for themselves and their loved ones like they did in the “good ol’ days”. It is absolutely vital that the federal government keep its nose out of medicine. Our health care system is not broken!!!!!!!
AAPS and Republicans really need to actually lay out what is needed to improve things. Why can’t AAPS model a co-pay system with high deductible insurance–something that was talked about years ago by CATO?????
Very few in Congress really “get it” (including Republicans). The only “system” that will restore sanity and fiscal responsibility is the HSA which puts patients in charge of their own spending and doctors directly accountable to their patients. Using “other people’s money” ALWAYS leads to waste, fraud and abuse and then the inevitable swelling of the government to provide “watchdogs” and then watchdogs for the watchdogs ad inifinitum. For the poorest of the poor, their could be subsidies for their deductibles and premiums although even that should be provided by voluntary charity. Forced charity (government programs) is really theft, not charity at all!
If it is true that the new Republican electee in Mass. really voted for the “Nationalized” plan in that state, then we’re in trouble, because he clearly doesn’t grasp the issues. He could easily be a trojan horse who will vote to approve a version of the 2000 page monstrosity now lurking in DC. Alternately, Congress could ram something throug before he is even sworn in.
The battle is not over, and probably never will be until the yellow journalists who have been smearing American physicians and hospitals for the last 25 years are made to behave responsibly. How can we get a law passed to regulate journalistic ethics?
It is truly beginning to look like it will take a massive revolt to carry the day. Every physician in the US should be getting his/her financial house in order so that we can survive a work stoppage and/or a simple boycott of the potential new system.
Gentlemen & Ladies,
The issue here is not to polarize our opinions and turn them into partisan debates but to find VALUE or LACK of VALUE in the existing bills and to start from there. I deplore the NIH (not invented here) approach that we Americans seem too often to fall prey to. We can’t even set up a field hospital in Haiti in a timely fashion but the Israelis can fly thousands of miles and do so. Let’s learn from one another and start acting like adults in the year 2010.
What is of value in the House and Senate bills? I did read parts of both and I agree that a lot of what I read was neuron-killing rhetoric. With all the input of both bills from AAPS members, there must have been some areas of value. That’s #1.
#2 is that we physicians should be asked to partake in the creation of any Healthcare bill. This is not the purview of legislators who have no field experience. There must be many of us who are near retirement or are retired who have a wealth of information. Let’s learn from our pooled experiences.
#3. Let’s mandate that any healthcare bill that is put into use must also be followed by the president, his family and all members of congress. This is not my idea but began with James Madison.
“I will add, as a fifth circumstance in the situation of the House of Representatives, restraining them from oppressive measures, that they can make no law which will not have its full operation on themselves and their friends, as well as on the great mass of the society.
This has always been deemed one of the strongest bonds by which human policy can connect the rulers and the people together. It creates between them that communion of interests and sympathy of sentiments, of which few governments have furnished examples; but without which every government degenerates into tyranny.” — James Madison, Federalist Paper #59
To me, the above would be solid starting points, and act as major morale boosters to so many of us who are fed up and disgusted with the dysfunction and corruption that have become the calling cards of too many of our elected officials in D.C..
The Democrats are now talking about resorting to trickery to pass their bill. We need to make it clear that we will not play on this field EVER! Write your legislators, enlist your patients , and let’s consider a strike and rally in Washington. If they go forward against the will of the people, we must stop them. Time for Docs to take to the streets!
Dear colleagues,
The day that physician organizations and private physicians agreed that the government (Medicare) could dictate what we CHARGED for our services instead of what they would pay was the beginning of the end. We now have a chance to reverse that as the cuts coming down the pike are not compatible with sustaining a viable practice.
We have been failed by the leadership of most of our specialty organizations. They have been busy groveling for their piece of the government pie while abandoning core principles of what is best for physicians and patients.
Go to my website for a plan that outlines private sector solutions that could be the starting point for individual state pilot programs. (www.usaHealthalert.org) If insurance was portable across state lines then truly innovative and successful programs would be duplicated. It would take physician, patient, insurance, and pharmaceutical re-education and thinking outside the box.
Best regards,
Jane Hughes, M.D., San Antonio, Texas