Reform act benefits only bureaucrats Published on November 21, 2010 in The Tennessean
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi famously said of her party’s massively expensive and expansive bill to accelerate government’s takeover of American health care, “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Americans have found out what’s in the law and pronounced it dead on arrival.
A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey finds 58 percent of likely voters favor repeal of the health-care law. Democratic pollster Pat Caddell asserts that the health-care fiat triggered his party’s loss of at least 60 seats in the House: “It is … health care (that) killed them. The American people found this a crime against democracy.”Besides deploring the partisanship that produced the titanic takeover, Americans are also revolting against the economy-wrecking, job-killing, bureaucrat-empowering, patient-quashing content of the law.Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, a Democrat, has warned that the health overhaul creates strong incentives for employers to drop coverage, which would dramatically increase the cost for taxpayers. Companies struggling in the still-wallowing economy aren’t about to hire new workers when faced with either paying increased premiums or hefty new government fines.
The new law also gives incredible discretionary power to Washington bureaucratic ideologues. That change, which shifts decision-making power away from you and toward Washington, threatens the very physician-patient relationship that forms the bedrock of American health care.
Doctor visits at risk
Case in point: President Barack Obama’s choice to head our Medicare and Medicaid system wants to save time and money by cutting out your visits to your physician.
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator Donald Berwick lauds the European socialist model that saves money by dictating which treatments and medicine patients can and cannot get. He also wants you to stop visiting your doctor for personalized care. Dr. Berwick has contended that “access to help and healing … does not always mean — in fact, I think it rarely means — reliance on face-to-face meetings between patients, doctors, and nurses. The health-care encounter as a face-to-face visit is a dinosaur.”
Some older Tennesseans can still remember their physician making house calls. Younger Tennesseans can at least remember when their physician took whatever time was needed to discuss their ailments, face-to-face. Then managed care cut down on the time of office visits to save money. Now, this bureaucrat wants to eliminate your office visits altogether.
The future that awaits patients under the new law is a Scrooge-like administration of faceless, government-run, rationed health care. The alternative is to repeal the new health-care law and pass bipartisan, targeted reforms that preserve both our economy and the patient-physician relationship.
If Dr. Berwick gets his way, imagine this email communication to a patient: "We understand from your text message to our virtual office that you're on the verge of dying from pneumonia. Please complete and submit the attached government-required Request for Electronic Healthcare Consult, Form No. 1040-IMSICK, in .pdf format. Our office manager will scan the bar code and place you in the queue for a brief teleconference, or alternatively, an email of web sites that may help you. This is an automated response--do not reply to this email address. Please be sure to assign someone to promptly cancel this request in the case of your demise while waiting."
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