The High Court will be hearing arguments on four key elements:
2) Is the individual mandate constitutional? This is the crux of the whole issue, and why ObamaCare is so dangerous. If this law can force you to purchase private health insurance, what will it force you - or private businesses - to do next? Can it force you to join a gym? Can it force you to prove on your tax returns how many vegetables you bought to prove you're living a healthful lifestyle? Can it force stores to give these vegetables away for free?
Remember, built into the Act is the implied right given to the HHS Secretary and other official panel members to hand down opinions that automatically become law. Because this Act gives unelected officials the power to force new laws on Americans, our own Congress - the legislative body responsible for enacting policy - is tossed aside, and with it, the very structure of our three-branch government system of checks and balances. And through this power, ObamaCare has already decided to force companies to provide free contraception. If there is any person who believes employers will not eventually be forced to provide "free" abortions or any other services, then sadly, that person is very naive.
3) If the mandate is deemed unconstitutional, then the Court must decide if the rest of the law must be struck down entirely or only parts of it.
4) Finally, the Court will consider if the enormous expansion of Medicaid is constitutional.
It's hard to say how the Court will rule on any one of these matters, but with at least one Justice - Elena Kagan - saying she will vote to uphold ObamaCare regardless of any arguments presented, you can safely bet the entire case will be subject to personal opinion by at least some of the Justices.
That's not good, because a law of this magnitude - essentially the federal government's takeover of our entire health system - is not the place for personal politics. ObamaCare needs to be struck down simply because it is harmful for both America and its citizens, both in terms of its outrageous costs and its personal assault on citizens, especially the elderly.
First, figures from the Congressional Budget office show that the $940 billion price tag originally put on ObamaCare over the next ten years is really going to cost taxpayers $1.76 trillion. The CBO also estimates that businesses that will now be forced to provide health insurance will see an additional $52 billion in taxes (and people wonder why companies aren't hiring?). Other data from the CBO shows that taxes will be levied - to the tune of $47 billion - on drug companies and medical devices. Insurance premiums are expected to rise by up to 3.7 percent over the next several years and within the ObamaCare legislation are new taxes on investment income for families earning over $250,000. Even sales of homes are subject to taxation under ObamaCare. How ironic - or outright sickening - that the Act dares to put the word "affordable" in its title.
Most ominous, the Act is carried out by an Independent Payment Advisory Panel, which consists of 15 people appointed by Obama who are responsible for overseeing costs, especially reducing Medicare spending. In the most brazen act of duplicity, the politicians speeding ObamaCare through to passage specifically added that the Act wouldn't go into full effect until "after the 2012 presidential election." Why? Because its proponents don't want senior citizens to know before the election that ObamaCare plans to cut $500 billion from Medicare beginning in 2014. Even now, the recommended cuts to Medicare reimbursements to physicians treating the elderly are so severe that many doctors are simply refusing to take on elderly patients, or are limiting their schedules to two slots per week for appointments dedicated to the elderly.
How horrendous that our senior citizens will have to compete with one another to get into one of these two precious appointment slots. Where our current system lets any elderly patient get in to see a doctor relatively quickly, how long will they have to wait to see a doctor once ObamaCare goes into full effect? How long will they then have to wait to see the doctor again for actual treatment, like hip replacements or cataract surgery, or worse, something life-saving?
Most chilling about the 15-member panel is that it alone will decide if someone deserves approval for medical treatment. What are the chances that an 81 year-old will be approved for a knee replacement by a panel whose sole task is to save money? Recall Senator Tom Daschle's words when he attempted to defend this particularly nasty part of the Act that puts a premium on money over human beings: "Senior citizens are just going to have to accept the discomforts that come with aging." This is a revolting, Orwellian, un-American way to treat our elderly citizens, or any American for that matter.
Even worse, supporters of ObamaCare know the entire Act is indefensible so as a way to drum up support for it, they must employ scare tactics to convince senior citizens and others that it is the Republicans who want to deny them access to healthcare. These are just more disgusting lies from the leftists who cannot rest on the merits of their own policies because they know their policies are destroying this country. And as costs continue to rise, and more doctors leave their practices, and fewer people enter the medical field to begin with because of these choking restrictions and costs, it will only be a matter of time before the rest of us are competing for precious few available slots to be seen by a healthcare provider.
Countries that have tried socialized medicine, such as Great Britain and France, are desperately trying to move away from the miserable failure of such a system because it simply doesn't work. How awful that our own President is doing everything he can to ram it down our throats.
Let's pray the Supreme Court will see through the horrific, unconstitutional nature of this Act, and strike down ObamaCare in its entirety.
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ReplyDeletePrivate health system is used by a limited number of people like MPs and wealthy entrepreneurs because the treatments are extremely expensive. Patients who use private doctors make out-of-pocket payments directly to the doctors to pay for the cost of their treatment. Private practice is still limited to a small number of consultancies, which offer diagnostic rather than curative services.
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