Our Health Care Dilemma - Part 3 - Quo Vadis?

If you are old enough to recall the 1951 film of that title, starring Robert Taylor and Deborah Kerr, you should know that the translation is, "Where are you going?"  That is what I hope to divulge in this, the third and final installment of the series.  I hope you took my advice last week and thought long and hard about where you stand on our current health care dilemma, because we will all be directly, and probably disastrously, affected by ObamaCare.

In the first two parts, I tried to develop a primary cause for the rising costs of health care. I am convinced that the biggest factor affecting cost is government intervention in the system.  I'm afraid that it will now become a huge factor in quality of care as well, and I don't anticipate improvement, but rather decline in that aspect, as has been demonstrated time and again in every single country that practices socialized medicine. Longer waiting periods and fewer doctors has proven to be the universal outcome.

Now, I'm not naive, and we all know there are cases of greed and fraud among the health care providers.  Anytime you create a system as large as Medicare/Medicaid, you invite fraud.  I'll even give you a crystal clear example.  I used to take warfarin, a generic drug, to control blood coagulation, and it was necessary to get tested once a month at a clinic.  I quit warfarin, which cost me pennies for each pill, and had my doctor prescribe another drug that costs me over $250-per-month, because every time I went to that clinic for testing a doctor billed Medicare $100. He bills that $100 for every single patient who gets tested there, and yet, I have never met him, and I suspect he has never set foot in the clinic. The new, expensive drug does not require the prothrombin time test, so I no longer go to that clinic and pay that crook.

We are now on the verge of a government-sponsored and soon-to-be single-payer health care system geared to cover literally every single person in this country, citizen or not. Now I ask you, what could possibly go wrong?

Here is what is already wrong with ObamaCare.   

• In 2010, the Federal Register, the official journal of the federal government of the United States, contained a prediction that 93 million Americans would lose their current healthcare coverage if the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was passed.  President Obama continued to tell us that "...if you like your healthcare, you can keep it ... Period." This is what he says now.
• Nancy Pelosi made a statement in favor of the ACA that, "We have to pass it to learn what's in it."  That is, according to physicians, the definition of a stool sample. I'll let you draw your own conclusions.
• President Obama promised on many occasions that premiums for the new healthcare would be reduced by $2500 per family of four.  To date, people who have been able to sign up for the ACA have found that premiums and deductibles are much higher than their prior healthcare contained.
• The government website to register for ObamaCare, which cost taxpayers over 500 million dollars, has not operated properly since it was activated, and only a handful of people have been able to sign up.  (That may be a blessing in disguise.)
• The "death panels" that Sarah Palin was mocked and castigated for mentioning, do, in fact, exist and are fully operational.  And they are exactly as Palin described them; no licensed physicians need apply. The people who get to decide whether or not you can be treated are all pencil-pushing accountants, not doctors.
• There are over 20 new taxes in the ACA and, while most are business taxes, they will all be passed through to the middle class consumers of those goods and services.
• We are only in the infant stages of ObamaCare, and there are many who predict that costs will far exceed estimates, and premiums in future years for all health insurance will again rise dramatically. 

One little detail that the ACA left out, one that may be an escape hatch for everyone, is that , while the IRS can penalize you for not having a healthcare plan, they cannot force you to pay the fine—or tax, as Chief Justice Roberts termed it.  The only way they can collect it is to deduct it from any federal tax refund you may have coming.  That is all the more reason to use the W-4 to maximize withholding so that you always owe tax with your federal return.  No refund = no penalty.

If anyone would like to accuse me of "hating" President Obama because he is black, I do not. I do dislike him, but I don't "hate" anyone because of the color of his or her skin.  There are many, many reasons detailed above as to what I dislike about the Obama  administration. For the record, I also disliked George W Bush for implementing the Medicare Part D prescription drug program.  I disliked his father for promising not to raise taxes and then breaking that promise.  I disliked LBJ for not only his Medicare and Medicaid schemes, but also for the Great Society debacle, which started all this madness.

As further proof that I don't hate President Obama because he is black, I would, in a heartbeat, vote for Herman Cain, another black man, for president.  In fact, I can think of several black, Hispanic and Asiatic Americans, men and women, whom I would gladly vote for as president.

I know this column was way too long, but it was necessary to put this much detail in to counter a bad bill that was 2600 pages long itself, and has over 22,000 pages of rules and regulations to govern it.  I trust that you appreciate my effort.