Obama Health Care Bill

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W.VA. JUDGE FIRST TO RULE
AGAINST KEY ACA PROVISION

A federal judge has ruled requiring thirty million uninsured Americans to get affordable health coverage in unconstitutional, rallying intransigent Republican leaders to renew calls to repeal Obamacare and fight harder to do so.

Despite earlier ruling by two Democrats on the federal bench in support of the ACA provisions, Judge Henry Hudson said in a twenty-four page ruling Dec. 12 that congress exceeded its authority under the Constitution’s Commerce Clause and would ”invite unbridled federal police powers.”

He denied an immediate repeal of the entire ACA, howveer, in attacking the legislation’s backbone, that of the compelling thirty million to ”eneter the stream of commerce” by getting health care in the private market. Many of the thirty million are poor and comprise America’s homless afflicted by alcoholism, addiction, and mental illness responsiable for their destitution.

If Judge Hudson’s ruling is upheld-it can’t get to the Supreme Court for two years at least- many other ACA provisions still would be intact and this challange does affact continued implementation of Obamacare.

More and varied court challanges are expected at the federal level and in state houses across the land, fueled by purely partisan tactics.

Incomming House Speaker, John A. Boehert (R-Ohio) reiterated GOP oppostion to the ACA bill, barely passed on a 2019 to 2012 Congressional vote. Insurance industry leaders say they cannot afford to cover these disenfrachised Americans, but could live with cost-cutting effects of the ACA, but only for healthy people already insured.

Obervers say Hudson’ ruling is now going to generate further public confusion over the complicated package becoming effect in stages over the next four years and requiring continual changes in many policies’ provisions.

Websites containing Q and A formats to help the public attempt to track all this suggest as a last resort to call the information number on every policy holder’s membership cards.

Obama Health Care Bill #5 12/18

VOX POPULI: PEOPLE SEE ACA CRITICS
ARGUMENTS FLY IN FACE OF ACTUALITY

Readers of a forum in The Atlanic magazine raise interesting contridictions to arguments that with the ACA, government is for the first time ever throwing out individual liberities, forcing Americans to obey, pay, or be punished.

Their arguments against conservatives’ arguments that compulsory medical insurancse, via the Obama Health Care Bill, poses an unprecedented threat to denial of civil liberities, make sense.

The federal government still cannot compel us to recite The Pledge of Allegiance, worhsip a god many Americans profess does not exist, nor marry a person we do not love. They cannot prosecute gay people for being gay (though persecution occurs) nor compel men and women to work at careers contrary to their choice, talents, or credentials.

On the other hand, the Military Draft dating to the Civil War forced men into training, uniform, commitment to uphold and defend beliefs they may not personally support, obey superiors who may lack leadership capability or even competence, kill other humans abd themselves die, face down in the mud or sand of a foreign land. Yet, conscripted Americans have the right to seek alternatives through the courts or draft dodge by other means including leaving the country. (The draft ebed in 1973 and experts predict it will never be revived due to changed modern modes of warfare)

The fact the ACA would compel people to spedn money for something they don’t want and ultimately help pay for assured medical care for other who are less-affluent in the crux of conservative opposition here.

”Conservatives only see freedom in the vicinity of their own wallets,” said one contributor to ”The Dish” The Atlantic’s column for comment from all viewpoints.

Obama Health Care Bill:

Playing Devils Advocate
For Socialized Medicine

What would really be wrong with socialized medicine in a nation where doctors of old offered health care for a dozen fresh eggs or a smoked ham, because that was the only curency a patient had?

Times have changed indeed and physicians drive a Mercedes Benz or a Porsche instead of one horse buggies depending on their age and personal automotive tastes. yes, we know their profession, degree of education and our health care have evolved far beyond croup and mumps or pinkeye to diseases we hadn’t names for-or knowledge of-a century ago. Their responsiblities are enormous and their recompense should reflect their degrees of knowledge, training and diligence.

Perhaps they’ve become too dependaent on a system where revenues flow into their corporate practices from various computerized sources like manna from Heaven, $500 for 10-minute consultation on a patient they never laid eyes on.

Two experiences come to mind. Hospitalized in 1977 very ill,I was billed $25 for each Tylenol dose I was automatically given without asking for it. Had I requested one, would that have been treated as an elective treatment and cost increased? My Thrify wife had a fit.

”What do you care?,” a brusque nurse snapped. ”Insurance pays it”

More recently (2009) I saw a doctor and paid cash. Hos front office was astounded. They wanted insurance forms. They weren’t even sure what to do with mint-issued currency. They were attuned to a paper and electronic system with its own built-in additional expenses.

one fifth of Americas economy os comprised of Health Care and the millions of individuals employed by it.

As early as 1948, the Journal of the AMA editorialized that state-provided health care smacked of communism and must be guarded against at all cost. Deep down, many in the profession do not want to see ”Affordable Health Care.”

They might not be able to afford their lifestyle and security, even if a nation mired in politics as usual could cobble together a system that provides for the least of its people, fairly and economically.

Obama Health Care Bill: America’s Affordable Care Act’

Step Ahead, or Back For Seniors

No matter how fetched it may seem, some opponents of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act see it as a jackboot in America’s door to forgo equal treatment for the old and infirm. Why waste resources on those nearer life’s end?, their fallacious reasoning goes.

Beware of any alarmist Internet postings that seem a bit hysterical and lack attribution beyond the word of the author’s sister-in-law’s hair dresser. Especially when the topic is emotional and political.

They foresee a system that rations health care to deny surgeries and procedures to older patients in favor of the young and able bodied, of more productive use to society. The eskimos used to be more direct, abanding grandparents on ice floes to sink or swim, when no longer able to earn their keep.

Internet postings–with no substantiation–have warned of plans to deny cardiac care to patients aged 59 or over, charging this is socialized medicine’s policy in Canada and the United Kingdom. This is patently false. The Uk and Canadian systems have been suggested as ones we might emulate, but their goals are the best affordable care for all, regardless of age.

Refusing cardiac surgery (the simplist and most common are insertion of stents or shunts to enhance blood flow to the heart) is so much bushwah, UK and Canadian Health officials say. There is procedure by which a panel decides the most medically effective and cost effective course to take, evaluating each individual patient.

But no treatment at all is not an option and patients as old as 85 have undergone successful heart surgery.