The reality of ObamaCare

Dear Editor:

At this time there is a massive usurpation of power by the federal government that has never been exercised before. It represents a threat to individual liberty in America as ObamaCare overlooks the limitations of congressional power in a very reckless and dangerous way.

On June 28, 2012, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of ObamaCare under the provisions of the taxing power of congress. This action will amount to the largest increase ever of taxation of us; the American people. We have a 3,000 page health care bill which no politician even read before signing. The bill requires us to purchase health care or pay a tax. This bill has thousands of pages of regulations. The size of the regulating handbook will soon rival the size of the current tax code. It's estimated that 75 percent of the tax will be on the backs of those of us who make less than $120,000 per year.

Health care reform has two goals: to provide uninsured patients with doctors, and to reduce the rising cost of medical care. The concept we have to understand here is that insurance is nothing more than a method of payment for medical care. Insurance is not health care. What congress has created is insurance reform, not true health care reform. There is no evidence that this bill will result in better medical care for the insured, but will result increased insurance premiums.

There aren't enough available doctors to take care of the 30 million people who will suddenly have health care insurance under ObamaCare. To worsen the problem the insurance that will become available to the uninsured will be the form of Medicaid. There are hardly any doctors who accept this insurance. They can't pay their overhead with Medicaid reimbursements, must less with Medicaid fees. This means that we won't be able to find a doctor who will treat us and those that we find won't be very good. This law can be seen as a train ticket with no available seats on the train. Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants will be treating us, and our more serious medical conditions will go unnoticed. They make many mistakes because they aren't doctors; they receive only a portion of the training as doctors do. They are in fact de facto doctors. The result will be more complications and death.

Without an adequate supply of doctors many people will flood the ER because Medicaid will cover the costs of the ER visit. This is what happened when RomneyCare was implemented Massachusetts is absorb all the new patients. Insurance costs went up under RomneyCare, making it a failure under the second goal of health reform. Massachusetts has the longest wait to be seen by a new primary care doctor in the nation, and the highest health care costs. That's why Romney doesn't toot his horn on the success of RomneyCare; it's more expensive than what preceded it, and it doesn't provide good care to the poor. ObamaCare was largely fashioned after this failed system in Massachusetts.

If you remove the lipstick from both ObamaCare and RomneyCare they are both swine, and putting different shades of pink on both laws can create political turning points, neither of which will do what it was intended to do. During the presidential debates, Romney will try to avoid talking about his failed RomneyCare and Obama will not attack it because there is no substantive difference between them. Each side will criticize the other over insignificant differences. Both candidates have offered the same bad solution to a problem that cannot be fixed by the government. Neither can improve the quality of health care for the uninsured nor will they reduce the costs of health care. More and more doctors are not dropping Medicare which means that seniors will soon find it harder and harder to get the care that they need as well.

Faye Ruckhardt,

Nesquehoning

fruckhardt@yahoo.com