By: Tamzin A. Rosenwasser, M.D.,

While the supposed purpose of an exchange is to help consumers find the health insurance product that best meets their needs, such a product is not likely to be found there. Rather, the exchange will just offer a limited line of government-approved products—rather like a store that sells only various sizes of blue pajama-like garments in a totalitarian state.

The ObamaCare bill requires states to satisfy the Federal government that they are setting up these exchanges by 2013, or the Federal government will force the state to use a national exchange, created and run by the Federal government. In either case, insurance companies will be companies in name only, their directors, pawns of the government. A name for that type of arrangement is Fascism.

Regardless of which entity sets up the exchange, the Department of Health and Human Services is given power to determine minimum requirements for medical services of all kinds, including the people who provide the services, as well as what the patient pays. The head of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners task force on exchanges has called for banning the sale of individual insurance policies, possibly because these exchanges bring new complexities of security, integration, processing, updating and verifying information concerning eligibility, income, billing, and exemptions, among companies, states and state agencies, the IRS, Department of Health and Human Services, and the Social Security Administration, just to name some of the complexities.

Eligibility for ObamaCare’s health insurance subsidies depends on income, so there will be an intrusive verification of income, family size, smoking status, and so on.

The exchanges themselves cost tax money to set up, but the bill requires them to be self-sustaining. Since the bill mandates requirements that many companies and customers will likely find distasteful, the exchanges embody a fundamental instability, which nothing but force can resolve.

If ObamaCare persists, exchanges will be bureaucratic nightmares. If it is repealed or declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court, states that set up exchanges will just have wasted time, money, and effort.

These are good reasons for not establishing exchanges, but there is another still more compelling. The sovereign states are not supposed to be agents of the federal government. It is properly the other way around.

The Articles of Confederation stipulated that each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence. When the Constitutional Convention convened in 1787, to rework the Articles of Confederation, those sovereign states created the Federal government. The states do not, anywhere in the Constitution, surrender their sovereignty. In the Constitution, they merely delegate certain enumerated powers to the Congress, President, and courts.

The only reason the states created the Federal government was to be their agent in cases in which it would be more advantageous to have the states act in concert. Thus, the Federal government is properly subservient to the states in all matters in which they did not delegate powers to it. This relationship has been seriously disturbed in recent years, a reminder of Jefferson’s words that “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.”

Nowhere in the Constitution is government authorized or allowed to claim power over individual citizens’ medical care. Since medical care is an intensely personal thing, it does not lend itself to governmental direction, not even if the citizens are willing to allow themselves to be wards of the Government, from which they will devolve to being the equivalent of livestock on a government ranch, if government is allowed to intervene in their medical care.

It has been argued that the “necessary and proper” clause allows Congress to intervene in medical care, but that clause reads “…To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.” However, those powers are the enumerated powers, only, and they do not include overseeing the medical care of the sovereign citizens. The same restriction applies to the “General Welfare” clause in the preamble.

Judge Roger Vinson has found ObamaCare unconstitutional in a case brought by 26 states, the National Federation of Independent Business, and two individuals. Judge Henry Hudson found the individual mandate unconstitutional. Other rulings say it is constitutional, and the case will go to the U.S. Supreme Court. Judge Vinson stated that since there is a long-standing presumption “that officials of the Executive Branch will adhere to the law as declared by the court,” his “declaratory judgment is the functional equivalent of an injunction.”

There has been no sign that the Executive Branch will so adhere to the law declared by the judge’s ruling. The Executive Branch shows contempt for the Court. States, however, because of these two rulings, plus the dislocation and expense that would be caused by instituting exchanges, should refrain from taking any actions to further ObamaCare. Citizens should now be attentive, and compel the Executive Branch to obey the law.

Jefferson warned us that “If once the people become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature in spite of individual exceptions.” The people have been inattentive, but they are waking up, and it is high time to collar the wolves, whether in the Executive, Legislative or Judicial branches. Our lives depend on it in a literal sense.

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Dr. Tamzin Rosenwasser earned her MD from Washington University in St Louis. She is board-certified in Internal Medicine and Dermatology and has practiced Emergency Medicine and Dermatology. Dr. Rosenwasser served as President of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) in 2007-2008 and is currently on the Board of Directors. She also serves as the chair of the Research Advisory Committee of the Newfoundland Club of America. As a life-long dog lover and trainer, she realizes that her dogs have better access to medical care and more medical privacy than she has, and her veterinarians are paid more than physicians in the United States for exactly the same types of surgery.

By George Watson, D.O.,  

Virginia Attorney General, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli, II, said, “It is a great day for the Constitution. This case is not about health insurance. It is not about healthcare. It’s about liberty.” 

In Commonwealth of Virginia v. Kathleen Sebelius, Judge Henry E Hudson found that Congress cannot expand the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution to force people to buy a product.  

We the People could not agree more with Attorney General Cuccinelli that “this case is not about…healthcare.” Judge Hudson, on the first page of his opinion refers to “the health care scheme adopted by Congress in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.” 

It is a scheme to grab control of medical care and the $2.4 trillion spent in delivering and receiving medical care, under the guise of helping the uninsured (by forcing insurers to sell coverage for pre-existing conditions without “discriminatory” premiums based on medical history). It is a scheme by greedy politicians looking for more CONTROL over everyone’s liberty. 

The very name of the act itself is a case of government fraud of the first degree. There will be no Patient Protection, as your records will be sent to the government, and we know how careful the government is to prevent Wikileaks. 

Affordable Care Act is another fraud by this President and his minions, Pelosi and Reid.  Instead of honestly dealing with the problems, they have manipulated the whole process as they try to dictate their socialist agenda to every citizen. They have used bribes of money for computers as bait to catch unthinking doctors who will, to receive paltry bonuses, turn over your most private health information to the bureaucrats. They have placed mandates on the States that will lead to bankruptcy of the States if they don’t restrict care, which means it will not be Affordable and you will not receive Care. But it is an Act. They “act” as though they are really concerned about you, but they use a legitimate problem to further their illegitimate deeds. 

Health and Human Services Secretary Sebelius stated, “The Act is an important, but incremental, advance that builds on prior reforms of the interstate health insurance market over the last 35 years.” She “points to congressional findings that the insurance industry has failed to take corrective action to eliminate barriers which prevent millions of Americans from obtaining affordable insurance.” But it is the government that creates the barriers! She should know. She spent 11 years as executive director and chief lobbyist for the Kansas Trial Lawyers, then 8 years as a state representative and 8 years as state insurance commissioner, before being elected governor of Kansas. 

Sebelius knows that we don’t need tens of thousands of pages of implementing rules for the twenty three hundred-page “Act.” She knows that rescinding laws that favor insurance companies over their subscribers and doctors would be faster and less costly—except for the congressmen who accept the “donations” from the insurance companies’ lobbyists. She had eight years as Kansas insurance commissioner to stand up for the people. But that was not her agenda. 

In Sebelius’s argument for the individual mandate (“minimum essential coverage”), she promotes “the notion that an individual’s decision not to purchase health insurance is in effect “economic activity.” She insists that “the Minimum Essential Coverage Provision is a necessary measure to ensure the success of its larger reforms of the interstate health insurance market.” All that We the People desire is the option to purchase insurance across state lines. 

Judge Hudson said the Minimum Essential Coverage “penalty lacks logical limitation as it could apply to transportation, housing or nutritional decisions.” And he said, “Salutatory goals and creative drafting have never been sufficient to offset an absence of enumerated powers.”  

We the People thank you, Judge Hudson, for protecting our Constitutional liberty!

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Dr. George Watson, Past-President of the Association of American Physicians, practiced traditional-insurance-based osteopathic family medicine for 23 years. In 2003, he canceled all insurance contracts and OPTED OUT of Medicare. He continues to work 100% for the patients–not the insurance companies. He has been a member of the Board of Directors of the AAPS since 2006. Dr. Watson is an outspoken advocate for the practice of private medicine, the patient-doctor direct model. He has been interviewed by Fox News Channel and multiple networks. Dr. Watson has spoken at numerous Tea Parties and has recently testified in State of Kansas Senate hearings on amendments to the state constitution to reaffirm the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and an amendment to affirm Health Care Freedom for all Kansans. Additional information on Dr. Watson: Before medical school, George Watson, D.O., was an Air Force officer winning the Husik Trophy in Navigator Training and Air Medal with oak leaf clusters for combat missions in Vietnam in the F-4 Phantom. During medical school, at Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences, he completed the Air Force Flight Surgeons Course with honors, later serving in the 184th Fighter Group in F-16′s.

Please read this important message from our friends
at the ObamaCare Repeal Pledge.

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TUESDAY, DECEMBER 14, 2010

ObamaCare Repeal Action Alert:

Call Your Senators to Stop Continuing Resolution HR 3082

We expect that the United States Senate will take up consideration of HR 3082, the the House-passed Continuing Resolution which contains billions of dollars of funding for ObamaCare in short order. The Senate must respect the will of the American people as expressed in last month’s elections, and defeat this resolution.

Call your Senator NOW at (202) 224-3121 and tell them to oppose the passage of HR 3082 if it funds ObamaCare!

The American people in last month’s elections made clear their opposition to implementation of ObamaCare. Yet the Democrats who still control this Lame Duck Congress last week included billions of dollars to begin funding ObamaCare in the Continuing Resolution they moved through the House. That’s wrong, and we must call on the Senate to reverse course and strip ObamaCare funding from this legislation before moving it to final passage.

Of the 29 House incumbents who took the IWV ObamaCare Repeal Pledge – a Pledge which includes, among other things, a promise to work to defund and deauthorize the individual component parts of ObamaCare – not a single one of them broke their promise during House consideration of the measure last week. They proved their integrity with their votes against funding ObamaCare, and we applaud them for it.

Now the action turns to the Senate, and we call on those who support repeal of ObamaCare to join with those who believe elections matter to work together to defeat the measure, or at least to strip out the provisions which fund ObamaCare before moving it to final passage.

Don’t wait! Call your Senator NOW at (202) 224-3121 and tell them to oppose the passage of HR 3082 if it funds ObamaCare!

It’s just not right for the Democrats who control the Lame Duck Congress to use their earlier failure to do their jobs to now sneak funding for ObamaCare into this last-minute catchall spending bill.

The will of the American people should be listened to.

Thank you.

NOTE: Additional contact information for all Senators is located at http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm .
 

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Another bill to watch:
Senate Democrats today released a 1,924 page $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill which they will try to push through in this lame duck session. According to The Hill this bill ”includes funding to implement the sweeping healthcare reform bill.”  More info at http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/133563-senate-dems-unveil-11t-omnibus-spending-bill-

Update:  The Heritage Foundation has posted a link to the text of the omnibus spending bill at http://blog.heritage.org/2010/12/14/the-omnibus-text/ .  Heritage also reveals that “[t]he 1,924 page bill (pdf) contains unknown thousands of earmarks and will prevent the next Congress from making spending cuts until fiscal year 2012.”

By Elizabeth Lee Vliet, M.D.   

Intrusive gropes of traveler’s private parts by TSA’s government employees is just the latest overreach of this administration to “grope and grab” every aspect of our lives. 

Here are some examples: 

1. Grope our bodies, literally or by x-ray, treating everyone as an equal threat to safety,   and grab harmless items.
2. Grope our medical privacy in the electronic records the government wants for every medical visit.
3. Grab our right to choose our medical treatment with our physician, rather than the government panels now being created.
4. Grope our financial records in the new “reform” act.
5. Grab our money for higher health insurance premiums to cover new Obamacare mandates.
6. Grope and grab our paycheck with more reporting and higher taxes.
7. Grab our liberty to choose how we pay for medical care.
8. Grope and grab our food choices with a food bill being rammed through in the lame duck Congress: as with “healthcare reform it has to be passed into law before we can see what’s in it.
9. Grope and grab our CO2 emissions–from traveling, from heating and cooling our homes, even from eating high-fat foods—in a vast new EPA power grab.
10. Grab our energy sources with drilling bans onshore and offshore.
11. Grope and grab our 401k and IRA plans in a proposed mandate to buy Treasury bills.
12. Grope and grab 30% of all personal and business international wire transfers of money beginning 1-1-2013, buried in the “Jobs” bill.
13. Grab added 3.8% tax on the gain over $250,000 on sale of our homes
14. Grab our kids’ toys, mandating removal from Happy Meals, starting in San Francisco.

The TSA indiscriminate body scans and intrusive gropes are a good example of what Benjamin Franklin warned against when he said in 1755 that “Those who would give up essential Liberty to purchase a little temporary Safety deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” His statement is often misquoted to omit the key adjectives essential liberty and a little temporary safety, which then changes the meaning significantly.  He recognized that we always have to make tradeoffs.   

In the name of airline safety, millions of Americans are being deprived of their fundamental, essential 4th Amendment liberty and have not really gained any greater safety than we had with the walk-through magnet and targeted pat-downs.  Body cavities can still be used by suicide bombers to carry explosives.  And cargo is incredibly still not being adequately screened for explosives.  So it is only the illusion of “enhanced security” that is being offered in exchange for gross violations of our bodies and our liberty—and without the basic safety precautions required in medical x-ray facilities, or the infection control precautions demanded of medical personnel. This grope-and-grab policy, like the others, is about control and subjugation of the public, not security.  What price are we willing to pay in dignity and privacy for the illusion of more safety? 

The government pretends it is all “for our own good.” Anybody could be a potential terrorist, and we as consumers and patients are too stupid to know how to manage our own lives.  Dr. Donald Berwick, recess appointed head of Medicare and Medicaid even said it directly in July 2008 as he celebrated the 60th anniversary of Britain’s National Health Service: “I cannot believe that the individual health consumer can enforce through choice the proper configurations of a system as massive and complex as healthcare.  That is for leaders to do.” 

Based on 30 years of medical practice, I disagree vehemently.  Patients and physicians acting as partners make far better medical decisions than any government bureaucrat I have ever encountered. 

We are being incrementally stripped of our liberties at an alarming rate, like the proverbial frog in a pot of gradually warming water.  Once we have lost all, it is too late to jump out of the boiling water, back to our essential liberty our Founders fought to achieve. 

The fundamental question is this:  Do you want the government groping and grabbing all these aspects of your life, or do you feel YOU should make the choices that are best for you?  It really isn’t a dispute over whether changes need to occur – it is whether the changes should be planned centrally by Washington to control and direct your life, or whether YOU are empowered to make the changes that are best for you, the individual. 

I think it is high time we demand that our new Congressional representatives start off the New Year with a bold halt to the federal government “grope and grab.”   That’s a New Year’s Resolution for change we can live with. 

©Elizabeth Lee Vliet, MD 11-30-2010 

Dr. Vliet speaks as an independent physician, not as an official spokesperson for any organization. Dr. Vliet has no financial ties to any health care system, pharmaceutical company, or health insurance plan.  Her allegiance and advocacy is to and for patients.
 
http://www.aapsonline.org/      AAPS – The Voice for YOU, Not The Government!

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Elizabeth Lee Vliet, M.D. is a women’s health specialist and the Founder of HER Place: Health Enhancement Renewal for Women, Inc. with medical practices in Tucson AZ and Dallas TX. 

Dr. Vliet is President of International Health Strategies, Ltd., a global healthcare and education service company whose mission is twofold: liberty in the choice of treatment options and preservation of the Hippocratic tradition of focus on the individual patient. 

Dr. Vliet is the 2007 recipient of the Voice of Women award from the Arizona Foundation for Women in recognition of her pioneering advocacy for the overlooked hormone connections in women’s health.  She is a Director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, and member of The International Menopause Society, The International Society of Gynecological Endocrinology, American Society of Reproductive Medicine, The Heritage Foundation, and The Freedom Alliance.  

Dr. Vliet received her M.D. degree and internship in Internal Medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School, then completed specialty training at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.  She received B.S. and M.Ed. degrees from The College of William and Mary in Virginia.  

Dr. Vliet’s books include: It’s My Ovaries, Stupid!; Screaming To Be Heard: Hormonal Connections Women Suspect– And Doctors STILL  Ignore; Women, Weight and Hormones; The Savvy Woman’s Guide to PCOS, The Savvy Woman’s Guide to Testosterone. 

Dr. Vliet has appeared on FOX NEWS, Cavuto, Stuart Varney Show, Fox and Friends and syndicated radio shows across the country addressing these critical issues.  She has been an invited speaker for numerous healthcare Town Hall presentations, and guest speaker on how healthcare regulation changes will not only physical but also financial health.  

Dr. Vliet’s medical and educational website is www.HerPlace.com.

By:  Richard Amerling, M.D., 

The landslide Republican victory, in taking the House and electing some strong conservatives to the Senate, can be interpreted as a mandate to rein in government spending, and specifically to repeal ObamaCare, as these issues were clearly behind the large turnout.  There is still a very real possibility the Supreme Court will find the “individual mandate” to buy private insurance unconstitutional.  If this provision is thrown out, it’s hard to see how the law survives, since the mandate is needed to finance it. 

Now is an excellent time to construct a conservative alternative vision for true reform of our health care delivery system.  Since most current problems with the health care system stem from government, a conservative plan should seek to reduce its role. 

It goes without saying that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act must be repealed since, like all the laws passed by this administration, it does precisely the opposite of what its name suggests.   By massively increasing the health care bureaucracy at the expense of actual providers of care, it will make care harder to access and more expensive.   Many physicians will take early retirement and the already great physician shortage will be exacerbated.  

The law is too large and complex to waste time foraging for items to salvage.  There is a great risk of leaving behind hidden mandates and rules that will be harmful.  Better to scrap the whole thing.  With Democrat Senators running scared for their jobs in 2012, it is conceivable the Senate would also vote for repeal (Harry Reid notwithstanding).  But not even the most generous view of Barack Obama’s ideological flexibility has him signing a repeal bill, and a veto override is out of the question for now. 

It may be possible, however, to enact affirmative measures that make ObamaCare irrelevant.  Here are some common sense, free market proposals, many of which were proposed and discussed, but ignored by the President and the Congressional leadership in the run-up to passage of ObamaCare.

1. Transfer the tax deduction for health care spending from employers to individuals. This would end the absurdity of purchasing health insurance at the “company store,” a practice that limits individual choice and liberty, nourishes a sense of dependency, and promotes overuse of care.  This policy, an accident of WW II wage and price controls, was the “original sin” in health care financing; doing away with it would empower consumers to shop for the best plan for their families, which will lower premiums.

2.  Remove barriers to the interstate sale of health insurance.   There is broad agreement on this proposition.  It would increase choice and competition between insurers and drive down premiums by effectively ending state mandates that drive them up. 

3. Deregulate and allow greater contributions to Health Savings Accounts.  These fabulous tax shelters give individuals more control over their health spending, and, coupled with an inexpensive policy to cover catastrophic illness (i.e., true insurance), are all most people need.  By returning most health care purchasing decisions to consumers, spending will immediately be slowed and prices curbed.   This is the conservative, free market, already tested and proven way to “bend the cost curve down.” 

4. Follow the recommendations of the bipartisan Breaux Commission and give Medicare beneficiaries a means-tested stipend to buy private insurance.  This solution came during the Clinton era but was too free-market to pass muster with Bill and Hillary.  With Medicare moments from insolvency, there should again be a bipartisan consensus to reform this behemoth.

5. Transfer (gradually) all Medicaid responsibility to the states.  Federal support for Medicaid allows much greater spending than would otherwise occur.  It forces frugal states to subsidize lavish coverage in New York, California, and elsewhere.  States should have complete freedom to organize their Medicaid systems along their own priorities, in exchange for losing, over perhaps five years, the federal subsidy.  This would encourage states to find innovative ways of providing health insurance for the poor, such as individual health accounts, or subsidies to buy private insurance.

The latter two points would allow the mammoth Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services to be mothballed, though Medicare could retain a role as insurer of last resort for those with pre-existing, expensive, chronic diseases.

6. Institute a “loser pays” system for medical malpractice to cut frivolous lawsuits.  The ability to launch a lawsuit (and this applies beyond medical malpractice) with minimal financial risk is the reason behind the explosion of malpractice litigation, with all the associated costs.  Tort reform at the federal level would require the Senate to override the trial lawyers’ veto, which could be a problem.  This reform should be pushed at the state level.

7. Finally, for true patient protection, let’s propose a constitutional amendment to guarantee the individual’s right to privately contract for medical care.  This will eliminate for all time the threat to the private practice of medicine and assure that, no matter what system is in place, patients will always be allowed to spend their own money on care.

The above points are clear, simple and practical solutions. They empower the individual and greatly reduce malignant government influence and unburden the taxpayer.  It is the conservative way forward on health care.

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Richard Amerling, MD is a nephrologist practicing in New York City.  He is an Associate Professor of clinical medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, and the Director of Outpatient Dialysis at the Beth Israel Medical Center.  Dr. Amerling studied medicine at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium, graduating cum laude in 1981.  He completed a medical residency at the New York Hospital Queens and a nephrology fellowship at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.  He has written and lectured extensively on health care issues and is a Director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. Dr. Amerling is the author of the Physicians’ Declaration of Independence (http://www.aapsonline.org/medicare/doi.htm).

Watch Clip of Dr. Amerling at National Doctors Tea Party Aug, 7, 2010: