Fighting for Our Lives: The Ten Worst Things About ObamaCare

The gauntlet has been laid down. With less than 50 days until the election, and what many agree will be the most significant political and philosophical decision point of our lifetimes, it’s time to take the gloves off. Not in terms of dirty politics, misleading television commercials or mud-slinging, but with regard to educating the American public about exactly what calamity will befall us if we do not vote President Obama out of the White House and repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The clock has run out; the time is nigh. Failure to repeal this legislation before it is fully implemented will have nothing less than devastating consequences for our country and our lives. Americans need to fully engage in this battle.

In writing the majority opinion of the Supreme Court and upholding the constitutionality of the ACA, Chief Justice John Roberts stated:  

“Members of this Court … possess neither the expertise nor the prerogative to make policy judgments. Those decisions are entrusted to our nation’s elected leaders, who can be thrown out of office if the people disagree with them. It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.”

In so writing, Chief Justice Roberts challenged the American people to speak loudly and decisively with their votes on November 6^th. In the critical remaining days before this election, we need to be armed with the overwhelming and compelling facts about the travesty known as ObamaCare and we need to broadcast these truths from every pulpit:

1) ObamaCare will increase healthcare costs

Although one of the primary stated goals of ObamaCare was to bend the cost curve downward, the average price of a family policy has risen by $2,200 since passage of the law. Costs for families, individuals, doctors and hospitals are expected to rise further as additional components of the law are put in place. In addition to the direct impact on healthcare costs, ObamaCare will levy more than $569 billion in new taxes to offset its massive entitlement spending.  Many of these taxes have nothing to do with healthcare, including new taxes on bio-fuel, investment income, and tanning salons.

2) ObamaCare will increase the deficit

When the bill was passed in March 2010, leading House Democrats proclaimed that it would significantly reduce the deficit. Within less than 6 months of its passage, the CBO essentially doubled the cost estimates from $940 billion to $1.76 trillion and those same House Democrats were forced to admit that the bill was not even “budget neutral.” Current estimates put the cost of ObamaCare at over $2.6 trillion between 2014 and 2023. The reality of this bill’s monumental impact on increasing the deficit has become clear.

3) ObamaCare will limit patients’ healthcare choices

Despite President Obama’s promise that “you will be able to keep your health plan and your doctor” under the new system, that is far from likely; more and more physicians will refuse to accept Medicare and Medicaid patients as a result of inadequate reimbursement from these programs. A large percentage of businesses will drop their current healthcare insurance plans rather than try to meet onerous requirements and rising costs. Furthermore, the law prohibits Americans from paying out of pocket for services that are not covered by healthcare insurance and makes it unlawful for physicians to render those services. This hardly constitutes legislation that promotes choice or provides any element of control to patients and their families!

4) ObamaCare will decrease quality

Think of all the people that you know who fly to Canada, Cuba or the United Kingdom for their healthcare. Can’t think of any? That’s not a coincidence. Government run healthcare systems rely on a capitated budget. What that gets you is rationing of services, long wait times and limited access to the newest drugs and latest technologies. Significant increases in the number of insured, combined with a host of new entitlements promised in ObamaCare, will tax the supply of practitioners beyond capacity. More than 60 percent of physicians say that the increase in patient volume will hurt the level of care they can provide. There will be a leveling of quality amongst physicians because physicians will no longer have to compete for patient business, they will lose their autonomy regarding patient care decisions and their incomes will be capped. The vast majority of physicians will ultimately become government employees and Americans will get exactly the type of compassionate and personalized care that we currently receive at the U.S. Post Office and the Department of Motor Vehicles.

5) ObamaCare will control decisions made by doctors and other healthcare providers

Make no mistake: ObamaCare represents a clear and absolute government takeover of the healthcare system. Federal bureaucrats – not physicians – will determine what healthcare benefits and services are “essential.” Doctors and hospitals will face a tsunami of new regulations and reporting requirements to ensure that they are following the government’s definition of “quality care.” Hundreds of pages of new “guidelines” have already been produced, aimed at “educating” practitioners on ways to “manage finite resources” and “limit overuse of services.” Everything from preventive care and screening services to chronic disease treatment protocols are being rewritten by government appointees and bureaucrats – not based on new scientific studies, but based on actuarial reports that evaluate the cost of services rendered. These new guidelines are nothing less than a thinly veiled manifest for healthcare rationing.

6) ObamaCare will decrease access to care and increase the physician shortage

What good is an insurance card in your wallet if there aren’t any doctors to see you? The United States was already facing a significant shortage of physicians prior to the passage of the ACA; studies have estimated that there will be a deficit of more than 69,000 doctors by 2015. Adding an additional 30 million people to the rolls of the insured will make that shortage worse. More importantly, increased patient volumes and decreased reimbursement is driving physicians out of practice; 43 percent say that they are considering retiring within the next five years as a result of the new law.

7) ObamaCare slashes Medicare

Maintaining his usual distant but cordial relationship with the truth, former President Bill Clinton proclaimed at the Democratic National Convention that the new legislation “does not cut Medicare services.” While technically correct, it is irrefutable that the ACA cuts $716 billion from Medicare, and those cuts will come from drastic reductions in payments to doctors and hospitals. Medicare actuaries predict that 40 percent of physicians will either go bankrupt or stop seeing Medicare patients altogether as a result of these cuts. So while ObamaCare may theoretically extend the life of the Medicare trust fund, the reality is that there will be no Medicare providers to staff it and seniors will be left with a worthless insurance subscription.

8) ObamaCare negatively impacts job creation

Small business is the engine for job growth in America. As a result of the “employer mandate” – that portion of the legislation that requires employers with more than 50 employees to provide government-approved health insurance for their workers or face federal fines – many companies will limit hiring in order to stay below the 50 employee minimum. Furthermore, as many as 60 percent of employers intend to increase the portion of premiums that workers are required to pay. Recent surveys indicate that others – as many as 35-40 percent – will simply stop providing coverage for their workers and opt to pay the fine, forcing employees to purchase their own insurance from state exchanges. The most powerful job creation plan Congress could enact would be to repeal ObamaCare!

9) ObamaCare violates religious freedom

Despite its many promises to the contrary, the Obama administration has refused to respect religious liberty in implementing the Affordable Care Act. The new law guarantees women access to “free” sterilization procedures and contraceptives, including drugs that are intended to induce abortions. At issue is the requirement that faith-based institutions such as Catholic universities and hospitals either violate fundamental tenets of their faith by providing the offending drugs and services in their employee healthcare plans or face the federal fines for failing to meet the employer mandate. Although HHS has promised to issue some type of “accommodation” following the election, it is unlikely that it will truly allow religious organizations and individuals to freely follow the teachings of their faith without government intrusion.

10) ObamaCare violates personal freedom

In a breathtaking assertion of congressional authority, for the first time in history, the federal government will force citizens to use their own money to purchase a product – healthcare insurance. The fact that the Supreme Court ruled that the penalty for not complying is a “tax” does not attenuate this stunning conscription. Not only does it mean that Americans are compelled to purchase a product every month for the rest of their lives, but it reflects an intrusion of the government into our private lives in a way that was heretofore unimaginable.

Americans are just beginning to understand the misadventure that is ObamaCare. It is time that we accept Chief Justice Roberts’ challenge to protect ourselves from the consequences of our political choices. We must educate others on the facts about ObamaCare and the egregious assault it will levy on our personal liberties and healthcare as we know it. We must vote for the candidate who has vowed to repeal this abomination. Fight as if your life depends on it, because it does.

Of Medicaid, State Budgets and Government Coercion

On June 28, 2012, the Affordable Care Act received a highly controversial stay of execution from the Supreme Court; in a 5:4 decision, the Justices ruled that the individual mandate does not represent a constitutional over-reach, and that the entire bill should fundamentally remain intact.

This historic decision will reshape the American healthcare system, perhaps irreversibly, and going forward, will serve as legal precedent for the highly manipulative use of taxation to further facilitate usurpation of our rights.

Regardless of the recent High Court ruling however, individual states would have been left to contend with escalating healthcare costs and burgeoning uninsured populations – A fact that even relegating ObamaCare to the gallows would not adequately address.  The fact is that current Medicaid spending for low-income American consumes twice the percentage of most states’ budgets than it did just 25 years ago, and this spending is simply not sustainable.

Across the United States, 20% of the total population is enrolled in Medicaid, with Utah setting the lowest percentage at 11%, and California marking the high at 30%. Total Medicaid spending in 2010 was $390B, $126B of which was borne by the states themselves.

ObamaCare was designed to include a significant expansion of Medicaid eligibility, ultimately intending to bring an additional 17 million low-income Americans into its fold.  Although the Federal government is slated to cover the costs of the expansion initially, subsequent increased costs will be on the States’ tabs.  Even had the “Affordable Care Act” been struck down in its entirety, however, the flailing economy and weak jobs market has caused Medicaid rosters to explode.  Most states are feeling the crushing impact of their growing Medicaid populations: The number of Texas residents who qualified for the program doubled from 2000 to 2011. State officials say the new federal law will no doubt deal Texas another financial blow as they struggle to cover an additional 1.8 million low-income residents, but the problem was already well established.  Likewise, Medicaid enrollment in Colorado increased nearly 58% between January 2007 and December 2011 as a result of the economic downturn and the State’s own program eligibility expansion. Add to that another half-million or so new Colorado Medicaid enrollees courtesy of ObamaCare, and one begins to understand the magnitude of the problem. States can afford just so many lining up at the trough.

The burden of providing health insurance to low-income residents has become so onerous that a number of states are now working to craft their own solutions to rising costs and the uninsured. Vermont, for example, has a plan to replace its traditional insurance model with a single-payer system. In their plan, the state would act as a publically funded and managed insurer, setting reimbursement rates and paying healthcare providers itself, much like the Canadian system. Once again, however, the devil is in the details; no one has yet figured out how to pay for such a plan.  It is not a blind leap to suspect that hefty new taxes and serious restrictions on healthcare choices will have to be part any large-scale state-administered insurance program. 

As the States struggle to deal with the growing Medicaid liability, it is worth noting that while Obama’s reform plan remains wildly unpopular, the GOP has yet to launch a credible alternative that has garnered the support of the populace either.  Congressman Paul Ryan’s plan to overhaul Medicare was not widely embraced, and other “plans” suggested by conservatives have been long on rhetoric and short on detail. 

In a recent opinion piece, political analyst, Scott Rasmussen, posited that lack of consumer involvement and control was ultimately responsible for our healthcare insurance crisis.  According to Rasmussen, “Both plans [Obama’s and Ryan’s] are unpopular because neither one puts consumers in charge of their own health care decisions. More than anything else, that lack of consumer control is the root cause of the health care problems facing our nation today.”  Even apart from consumers’ lack of personal and fiscal accountability regarding health and life-style decisions, Rasmussen has a point when it comes to the acquisition of health insurance.

First, Rasmussen’s argument gets to the proverbial “carrot vs. stick” dilemma: ObamaCare was designed for ultimate governmental control over the system, and it intends to employ a hefty stick, in the name of a tax, to levy on those who do not comply with the mandate to buy insurance. Second, is the more subtle and more insidious fact that people do not place the same value or appreciation to those things that are either chosen for them or forced upon them.  

A more palatable approach would be to align incentives such that consumers are motivated to purchase their own insurance, and to arm them with tools to make the most prudent and informed choices for themselves and their families.  This includes the multitude who are currently preparing to be embraced by the newly expanded Medicaid cloak, many of whom might be inclined to seek out private insurance rather than settle for the public option if they were appropriately enticed to do so.  Let’s face it: Does anyone really think that the public option will be a better one than private insurance?  Public housing with a fresh coat of paint is still public housing; and most people would far prefer another alternative.  Since most Americans recognize that it isn’t in the country’s best interest to have millions of uninsured citizens drawing resources from the system, the challenge becomes how to approximate “universal coverage” on a more voluntary basis.

For the 50% of the population that actually pays taxes, offering broader tax incentives would likely result in more people voluntarily buying insurance.

Rather than companies providing insurance for their employees, workers should be allowed to use employer designated monies, as pre-tax dollars, to pick their own insurance plans, supplementing with personal funds if the plan chosen costs more than the company has allocated, and perhaps keeping the surplus if they opt for a less expensive one.  Part and parcel with such an approach is to have a wide variety of competing insurance plans for employees to consider, including options with both high and low deductibles and corresponding premiums.

People should be able to buy insurance policies across state lines, and take their policies with them should they leave and choose other employment.

It is also high time to end the federal antitrust exemption currently granted to health insurance companies, eliminating price-fixing, bid rigging, and market allocations.

Lastly, and not insignificantly, healthcare insurance companies should be allowed to offer attractive discounts to subscribers who make proactive healthy life-style choices such as maintaining a normal BMI, exercising regularly and not smoking, in the same way that auto insurers reward safe driving records and homeowner’s insurers incentivize fire suppression systems.

All of this would result in increased free-market competition among insurance companies, and would likely do more to drive down costs than any amount of government interference or regulation.

Many of these same strategies could be instituted for the newest population of Americans who are heading to flood the Medicaid program.

Rather than further burdening the states to provide additional residents with subsidies in the form of Medicaid -- and rather than trying to strong-arm citizens to purchase insurance for fear of the tax hammer -- aligning incentives to drive consumer engagement and desired behaviors, and empowering people with information to make informed decisions about their healthcare is a far more worthwhile approach.

More Blowback from Healthcare Reform: The Growing Physician Shortage

On March 21, 2010, the House of Representatives passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and completed what then Senator Ted Kennedy called “the great unfinished business of our society”.  In so doing, congress purportedly ensured that every American would have access to quality, affordable health care, as a right and not a privilege.

While the 2700 pages of the bill include a vast array of new insurance and physician requirements, and hosts of new patient entitlements, perhaps nothing has gained more attention than the bill’s mandate for health insurance coverage.  In addition to controlling and driving down escalating healthcare costs, the final health insurance reform legislation had the highly publicized goal of care accessibility for all Americans.  Apparently, the bill’s architects believed that mandating healthcare insurance would somehow translate into assuring this access to care.  In the vernacular of the Left, “insurance coverage” has become synonymous with “care access”. Nancy Pelosi herself stood at the podium and announced, “This bill assures that millions of previously uninsured people are now covered, so that now all Americans have access to healthcare!”  Ah, the power of Liberal magic! 

Unfortunately, as seems to be the case with so many things that the Democrats control, someone forgot to do the math.  America was already facing a significant shortage of physicians prior to the passage of the reform bill.  Adding more than 30 million newly insured people into the system will make the deficit far worse.

The Association of American Medical Colleges’ Center for Workforce Studies released new estimates that show physician shortages will be 50 percent worse in 2015 than forecast.  "While previous projections showed a baseline shortage of 39,600 doctors in 2015, current estimates bring that number closer to 63,000, with a worsening of shortages through 2025," the group said in a statement.

In addition to the 30-plus million people newly insured as a result of the mandate, the federal government plans to expand Medicaid coverage to low-income adults and to subsidize purchases on the health insurance exchanges.  These potential new patient numbers are additive to an already aging population with a steady increase in the incidence of chronic disease.

Although there are some preliminary plans in the reform bill to increase the number of primary care physicians, none of the provisions will have any impact on the doctor shortage by 2014, the year that most of the insurance coverage mandates go into effect.  Unfortunately, a nicely laminated insurance card will not mean much to patients without providers to actually care for them.  Ultimately, what has been touted by the Democrats as a solution to lack of healthcare access is tantamount to addressing a hunger crisis by passing out gift certificates to Denny’s in a town that has no Denny’s!

To exacerbate the issue further, despite being reassured repeatedly that we will love life in the new world order of healthcare reform, the majority of Americans have significant distrust for the bill, and most are concerned that it will ultimately increase the cost of care while lowering quality and extending wait times. 

Physicians, in particular, are unhappy with the bill – So unhappy that many feel that they will retire or look to other avenues for employment.  In a survey done in 2010, nearly one-third of all practicing physicians indicated that they would leave the medical profession if the healthcare reform legislation was signed into law. The survey was conducted by the Medicus Firm, a leading physician search and consulting firm, and was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. A majority of physicians interviewed said that healthcare reform would cause the quality of medical care in America to “deteriorate” and that it could well be what sends a sizeable number of doctors out of medicine altogether.

Nearly a third of the over 1,100 doctors who responded to the survey said that they personally would quit the profession or retire early if the bill became law.  A whopping 63 percent of physicians said they would not recommend the profession after healthcare reform passed.

In addition to many doctors abandoning their practices entirely, the healthcare reform legislation will likely have a significant impact on practice styles for those who remain in the game.  In response to a huge influx of new Medicaid patients and others covered by plans with low reimbursement, physicians will continue to migrate toward hospital-based practices and other employment models where reimbursement is less uncertain. Physicians will also likely reduce or entirely eliminate patients from certain insurance categories, including Medicaid and Medicare.  Interestingly, a study co-authored by the American Medical Association, the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), and the Council on Graduate Medical Education (COGME) noted “a strong correlation between the decline in inflation-adjusted physician fees and the decline in average physician hours worked per week”, suggesting that physicians tend to work less the less they are rewarded. Wow.  Who knew?  While some doctors will simply work less, others will opt to open concierge-type practices in order to avoid third-party payers, and some will move to temporary, locum tenens or part-time work.  The cumulative effect however, is the same: They all result in the overall decrease in physician hours and a reduction in patient access to care.

Americans who live in areas that already have a shortage of physicians will likely experience escalating wait times for appointments as the ranks of newly insured patients increase. Those who move into a new community may well have difficulty finding a doctor who accepts new patients, especially if they are on Medicare or another government subsidized plan.

Healthcare was already a financially precarious industry.  Well prior to the passage of the reform bill, a large percentage of doctors felt that they would not be able maintain their practices if patient loads continued to increase while reimbursement decreased.  The average debt for a medical school graduate is $140,000, and many students rack up school loans approaching a quarter of a million dollars or more. By definition, cost savings on healthcare will not be achieved by limiting access to health insurance, as the insurance mandate does just the opposite. Proponents of the bill maintain that rationing of care is not their goal.  Savings, therefore, will have to come from reduced fees to doctors and other care providers. As a result, even if there are still some willing to make the onerous time and work commitment to medical education and training, being a doctor is becoming less and less financially feasible.

It appears that an unintended consequence of the healthcare reform legislation may be a very dramatic decrease in the physician workforce, coincident with an all time high on its demand.  This now limited workforce will be relied upon to care for our growing aging population, our escalating numbers of obese and chronically ill, and the tens of millions of patients newly insured through health reform.

Whether or not the Supreme Court overturns the recently passed legislation, no version of health care reform will succeed without an adequate supply of physicians.  It is therefore incumbent upon Congress to enact policies that increase the nation's primary care and specialty physician workforce.  The medical practice environment must also be changed to ensure a physician workforce that is motivated and robust. Improved and standardize reimbursement processes, serious tort reform, a reduction in medical educational debt, increased clinical autonomy, and reciprocity of state medical licensure are needed to attract new doctors to the profession and to encourage those already in it to remain.  If we fail to protect medicine as an honorable and sustainable career and to ensure a rewarding work environment, lack of physicians will be the new form of rationing.

                                                            written by Kelly Victory

The Contraception Mandate: Obama’s Latest Trojan Horse

Unfortunately, controversy over the Obama administrations recent “contraception mandate” has virtually consumed the presidential primary over the past several weeks.  This is the mandate that states that virtually all employers, including Catholic and other religious institutions, would be forced to pay for free preventive services, including sterilization, contraceptives and drugs that cause abortion, and that all insurers would have to cover these services without additional cost to the patient. 


It’s not that the topic is unworthy of discussion and outrage, but conservatives have quickly allowed the arguments to go precisely where liberals directed them – to a perceived Republican assault on contraception itself, and a frenzied uproar about attacks on “religious freedoms”.  As a woman, a physician and a Catholic, I find this both disingenuous and absurd. 

There is nothing about contraception that is a pressing “women’s health issue”. Pregnancy is not a disease.  And without detailing the obvious, there are adequate ways to prevent it with absolute certainty.  Furthermore, multiple big-box pharmacies sell contraception for less than $10/month, rendering this hardly a “healthcare crisis” demanding the kind of national outrage that many Democrats and at least one outspoken Georgetown law student have suggested.

And try as they might, Democrats would be hard pressed to find more than a handful of conservative Christians whose stance is that access to contraception, in and of itself, should be limited or banned – Theirs is simply an issue of who should be expected to provide and pay for that contraception.

The outrage over the contraception mandate is well justified – But the focus should be on the real issues at hand: Firstly, that it is part of the government’s bigger plan to control healthcare costs by engineering healthcare guidelines and implementing social programs that meet that goal, independent of the overall impact on health and wellness; and secondly, that it represents yet another egregious intrusion of the federal government into the affairs of private companies and private citizens, and reflects a highly concerning level of control over our private lives, extending far beyond an affront to religious freedom. 

Consider first the Democrats’ contention that contraception is a “women’s health issue”. Health and Human Services Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, told the House in mid-March that contraception is "a critical preventive health benefit for women and for their children."

This argument is particularly interesting given that at the same time Democrats are claiming that contraception is a “critical women’s health issue”, and are attempting to paint Republicans as cold and heartless in that regard, the Obama administration’s Preventive Services Task Force has come out with new recommendations that women should not start regular breast cancer screening until age 50 rather than the previous recommendation of age 40. The new guidelines came out in November 2009, from the group that has significant influence over doctors, insurance companies and policy makers. The Task Force’s new recommendations also state that women between ages 50 and 74 should only have mammograms every other year, rather than every year. And it recommends that doctors stop advising women to do breast self exams.

The Task Force’s stated reasoning behind these new guidelines is that that only one person was saved for 1,900 screened – A conclusion that has been heavily contested by a number of groups, including the American Cancer Society. The panel felt the cost of all these screening mammograms and the potential for false positives outweighed the impact of early detection.

For years both self-examination and mammograms have been essential parts of regular preventative breast care for women.  According to the American Cancer Society "death rates from breast cancer have been declining since about 1990, with larger decreases in women younger than 50." A combination of early detection and improved treatment regimens are cited as the primary reason for improved survival rates.

U.S. government-run insurance plans and companies will now likely use these new federal Task Force guidelines to eliminate coverage for yearly mammograms. In addition, the Task Force has released new guidelines on cervical cancer screenings suggesting that women should wait until their 20’s to have their first pap smears and that they should be re-screened less often.  After years of educating women and the public to participate in early detection screening, the Obama administration has just done an about-face when it comes to breast and cervical cancer.  Many on the right have correctly concluded that the changes in guidelines are nothing more than rationing intended to save healthcare dollars.

When asked who will pay for the new HHS contraception mandate, Secretary Sebelius finally showed her hand: She replied that a reduction births will compensate employers and insurers for the cost of complying with the new requirements.  “The reduction in the number of pregnancies compensates for the cost of contraception,” Sebelius said. She went on to say the estimated cost is “down not up.”  In other words, it’s important that we provide contraceptives because pregnancy is more expensive to the federal government than the cost to prevent pregnancy.

This all begs the critical question: “Who is really the strong proponent of women’s health, and who is simply trying to cut healthcare costs with rationing of services and social engineering maneuvers?”  Just imagine how much money we will save when we stop diagnosing breast and cervical cancers when they’re still early enough to treat!

Now look at point number two -- The over-reaching impact of the mandate on our personal liberties: While many are focusing on the contraception mandate as a violation of religious freedom -- which is real -- and the associated affront to our constitutional, First Amendment guarantee of religious liberty, the bigger issue is being obfuscated: when the government takes over control of our health-care system, it takes control over our most private, personal decisions.  It also assumes control of everything that private companies and organizations – religious or otherwise -- can do.  Business models, plan designs, revenue streams, and customer relationships are totally at the whim of the government. This is about ultimate control of very aspect of society: religious, social and economic.

One of the first critical steps to implementing the single-payer government healthcare system that President Obama and so many on the left promote, is to force consistency in coverage and homogeneity in plan design; in other words, to force removal of all customization and personalization.

In a free market, insurers are able to customize plans and tailor coverage to meet the needs of employers and individual buyers vs. the government dictating a one-size-fits-all plan. Amongst other things, free-market competition and the ability to provide a better product drives innovation and keeps costs down.

If the government can now dictate that employers and insurance companies have to provide contraception for the prevention of pregnancy, what’s its next mandate: Car seats for infants?  Bicycle helmets?  Football pads?  Perhaps sun screen?   In this way, the contraception mandate defines the proverbial “slippery slope” in the take over of healthcare, and ultimately in controlling society.

 At what point does the relationship between the insurer and the insured, the employer and the employed, the doctor and the patient, lose all semblance of humanity and become a prescribed set of governmental rules and mandates aimed at driving the populace to the lowest common denominator?

In one fell swoop, the United States will go from the country that has the best cancer and trauma survival rates, and has made more discoveries and advances in healthcare than any other nation on the planet, to the one that is crippled with mandates and onerous regulations that effectively stifle innovation and progress, and one where critical screenings and services are rationed based on actuarial calculations rather than medical science.

Democrats have effectively skewed the optics of the contraception argument to appear that it is about the value of protecting women’s health and whether or not religious freedom should supersede the sanctity of sexual freedom.  If we can see beyond the affront to Catholic social thought, the discussion is really about government mandates aimed at rationing healthcare dollars, controlling costs, and applying an artificial coda of social “equality”. It reflects a continued march down the path to increased intrusion and control by the federal government into the private lives of its citizens.

If we believe that the Constitution’s protection of our lives and liberty is valid, then the Supreme Court must declare the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act unconstitutional, and ultimately stop the limitless control of the government over our lives, such that we can return our country to the path to liberty and prosperity.

                                                     blog founded by Kelly Victory
                           written by Kelly Victory MD copyright 2012 all rights reserved