The House Bill Is A Terrible Bill For Medical Care And The Economy. Part 1

Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP,MACE

President Obama was elected on the themes of change and hope. He captured the imagination of all generations. Americans were starved for innovative change. He inspired many with hope for the future.

Voters did not dream that the change Democrats had in mind was making health care even more expensive and rigid than the broken existing healthcare system most Americans were dissatisfied with.

The combined 1900 page House of Representatives bill released last week is more ominous than the 1100 page HR 3200.Few have had the energy to read and comprehend the full implications and unintended consequences of Nancy Pelosi’s bill President Obama has raved about.

President Obama said Nancy Pelosi is not only the first woman speaker of the house but the greatest speaker in the history of the United States.

“Speaker Nancy Pelosi has reportedly told fellow Democrats that she’s prepared to lose seats in 2010 if that’s what it takes to pass ObamaCare, and little wonder. The health bill she unwrapped last Thursday, which President Obama hailed as a "critical milestone.”

The bill contains increased new spending, higher taxes, higher insurance premiums, rationed care, plus a lot of dishonest accounting.

The bill ignored the citizen protests of last summer.

It is not paying attention to the American public’s needs at the time of the worse economic recession since the depression. America’s economic growth depends on consumers spending. The economy cannot grow in a time of increased taxes on the middle class and a jobless recovery.

It is not paying attention to the historically underestimation of costs of a new entitlement program.

“With spending and debt already at record peacetime levels, the bill creates a new and probably unrepealable middle-class entitlement that is designed to expand over time.”

“ Taxes will need to rise precipitously, even as ObamaCare so dramatically expands government control of health care that eventually all medicine will be rationed via politics.”

The middle class independent voters have caught on. They have forcefully expressed themselves in the November 2 elections even though the administration denies it.

“Democrats have dumped any pretense of genuine bipartisan "reform" and moved into the realm of pure power politics as they race against the unpopularity of their own agenda. The goal is to ram through whatever income-redistribution scheme they can claim to be "universal coverage." The result will be destructive on every level—for the health-care system, for the country’s fiscal condition, and ultimately for American freedom and prosperity.”

President Obama and the congress either do not understand medicine and basic economics or they are sinister. I choose to believe they do not understand medicine or basic economics. In either case the President and congress are doing a tremendous disservice to this country and its citizens.

The opinions expressed in the blog “Repairing The Healthcare System” are, mine and mine alone.