The 100-page pamphlet 'Pull the Plug on Obamacare' by Howard Hyde is now available from Amazon.com.
...or go to Amazon.com and search 'Obamacare Hyde'.
Please buy 1,000 copies for your closest friends and write glowing customer reviews. Or write hateful and venomous ones if you prefer; just spell my name and the title correctly please.
More Health care reform resources on the Obamacare page.
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Why the big push against Obama care?
A
dear friend and colleague of mine, an independent computer consultant, writes
“So, why the big push against Obama care? It is far from perfect but anything
that begins to dissociate healthcare with employers is a step in the right
direction in my opinion.”
Dear
D,
We
agree that the current system of privileges for employer-sponsored plans is
flawed. Individuals who shop for health
coverage independently of their employer should not be handicapped by a 70
year-old wage-control evasion scheme. See page 67 of Pull the Plug on Obamacare:
‘Level the Playing Field Because World War II is Over and We Thought We Won’.
So
then isn’t Obamacare a step in the right direction? It would be if it were
expanding the choices people have and resulting in lower costs. But it’s doing
the opposite. Corporations, small businesses, universities and even unions are
already finding that the cost of compliance with the law’s mandates (like guessing
whether their plan will qualify for approval of the department of Health and
Human Services – HHS – according to rules that have been announced but are yet
to be written; and collecting information on how much their employees’ spouses
earn) are making it difficult or impossible to continue to offer health
coverage to their members. At the margin, they are shutting down more than
expanding.
Employers’
incentives under Obamacare are increasingly to cut back on hiring (especially
if they are near the 50-employee threshold), cut back hours to part-time status
or substitute offshore contracts or machines that don’t talk back or take sick
days. This is not ludditism; there is a place for automation and free trade in
a capitalist economy. But making employing American workers more expensive than
it needs to be by force is not a free-market virtue.
Moreover
physicians, traditionally self-employed, are being herded into large hospital
corporations as employees. By 2014, the majority of those that haven’t taken
early retirement (80% are contemplating it) will be employees of increasingly
large health maintenance organizations (HMOs) or accountable care organizations
(ACOs). This trend should be alarming to an independent businessman like yourself who is one of the
admirable few computer consultants who has managed to keep out of captivity in
spite of the overregulation that discourages corporations from contracting with
entrepreneurs on pain of IRS wrath.
To
the rescue: the state-run health insurance exchanges, the free-lunch bazaars. These
are not markets; if they were then the only role for government would be as
referee to enforce contracts, support private property rights and prevent and
punish murder, robbery, theft, fraud, rape, persecution and conspiracy. Rather,
the exchanges are regulatory sandboxes for the czars of the HHS and IPAB
(Independent Payment Advisory Board) to play in, making decisions for patients,
families and caregivers, spending taxpayer money and taking control over our
lives.
A
‘step’ in the right direction? Obamacare is not a ‘step’. It is the most ambitious social program ever
attempted in the USA, bigger than Medicare and Social Security combined, and
those are already on track to Greek-style bankruptcy, having blown all original
cost estimates by orders of magnitude (see ‘A History of Cost Overruns’ on
pages 48-50). There is nothing to lend confidence to the idea that the most
massive program of all will be immune to a similar fate.
The
ACA is far more than ‘far from perfect’. Unfortunately it is fraudulently
conceived, destructive and doomed to failure. If you don’t believe me, please
read Sally Pipes’ The
Truth About Obamare or Betsy McCaughey’s Beating
Obamacare.
More Health care reform resources on the Obamacare page.
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Pull the Plug on Obamacare now available
The 100-page pamphlet 'Pull the Plug on Obamacare' by Howard Hyde is now available: Click here.
See also the companion web page at www.hhcapitalism.com/p/obamacare.html.
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Washington Examiner: Florida Gov. Rick Scott's craven retreat on Obamacare
Florida Governor Rick Scott, a one time activist opponent of Obamacare, reversed himself on February 20, 2013 and now is callling for an expansion of Medicaid to Florida residents under the federal Affordable Care Act.
More Health care reform resources on the Obamacare page.
Read the full article in the Washington Examiner.
More Health care reform resources on the Obamacare page.
Saturday, February 23, 2013
Obamacare will not even accomplish its core objective
According to a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) study, 30 million Americans are still expected to be without health insurance in the year 2022. Obamacare will not even accomplish its core objective.
More Health care reform resources on the Obamacare page.
- http://cnsnews.com/news/article/cbo-obamacare-will-leave-30-million-uninsured
- http://finance.yahoo.com/news/obamacare-leave-30-mil-without-230800173.html
- http://www.datehookup.com/Thread-989638.htm
- href="http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/43472-07-24-2012-CoverageEstimates.pdf
More Health care reform resources on the Obamacare page.
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Let this Patient Die
Some people want to ‘reform’ Obamacare, not repeal it. Now that we know what’s in it, can’t we remove what we don’t like and keep the good parts?
A plan so deeply rooted in misperception, centralized planning, misinformation, mono-partisanship and political bullying, passed in the Senate in the wee hours of Christmas Eve 2009, is not salvageable. Medicare and RomneyCare at least had the virtue of being bipartisan efforts. But Obamacare was passed without a single Republican vote. 83% of physicians in the U.S. are opposed to it, to the point of retreating from their practices, opting out of Medicare, decreasing office hours or even quitting while they are ahead. The general public began to have buyer’s remorse almost immediately after passage, and that sentiment has only grown stronger since. As of the end of 2012, 54% of Americans were opposed to universal coverage, the idea that it is the government’s job to ensure that all Americans have healthcare coverage. The law is so unpopular that the department of Health and Human Services (HHS) withheld publishing its rules for how states and doctors will be required to comply with the law (13,000 pages and counting) until after the 2012 election was safely over. If the law is so warm and fuzzy, why did Louisiana and other states have to file a Freedom of Information Act request just to ‘find out what’s in it’? Former supporters of the bill are openly expressing astonishment at the destruction they see happening around them, like the physician who writes “Medicare made the rules and now punishes doctors for following them”.
To fix what’s wrong with medical care in America, we need REAL health insurance along with liberty, voluntary cooperation, free markets, the price system and the virtues of the free people of America. A true health insurance market thriving under free-market competition will provide the greatest range of choices possible to all of us, including today’s uninsured. Such a market needs freedom and competition; not over-regulation, rationing and penalties; not a government takeover. Individuals, families and physicians should be the ones in charge; not the federal Department of Health and Human Services and committees that can’t be recalled by voters.
The Hippocratic oath, taken by physicians for over two thousand years, pledges: “First, do no harm”. America needs reform, but not just any reform. We cannot rush into top-down, government-directed economics out of an irresistible urge just to ‘do something’, convinced that “it can’t possibly get any worse”. It can always get worse. It is worse in almost every other country and is already getting worse here under Obamacare. Constructive reform has to be based on an accurate assessment of the circumstances and on sound economic principles.
Reversing Obamacare won’t be easy this late in the game. The Administration and die-hard supporters of the law aren’t standing down for a gentleman-general’s winter camp; to the contrary, they are armed with virtually unlimited resources and mobilized to put down any trace of rebellion. The element of surprise won’t be found in a frontal attack on an A.C.A. stronghold, like (metaphorically) George Washington’s ambush of the Hessians at Trenton. It will come, rather, from all of the former and fair-weather supporters who never expected that the rising costs, rationing, shortages, loss of liberty, restriction of choices and deteriorating quality would fall so heavily upon them personally.
But reverse it we must, because living under this law’s regime will be much dearer still than the cost of fighting it to the bitter end. The death panel rationing committee of the American citizenry has determined that this patient’s life is not worth the cost of prolonging. It’s time to pull the plug on Obamacare.
This article was adapted from the forthcoming book 'Pull the Plug on Obamacare', coming March 1 2013. Visit the Obamacare page for more information.
Tweet
More Health care reform resources on the Obamacare page.
A plan so deeply rooted in misperception, centralized planning, misinformation, mono-partisanship and political bullying, passed in the Senate in the wee hours of Christmas Eve 2009, is not salvageable. Medicare and RomneyCare at least had the virtue of being bipartisan efforts. But Obamacare was passed without a single Republican vote. 83% of physicians in the U.S. are opposed to it, to the point of retreating from their practices, opting out of Medicare, decreasing office hours or even quitting while they are ahead. The general public began to have buyer’s remorse almost immediately after passage, and that sentiment has only grown stronger since. As of the end of 2012, 54% of Americans were opposed to universal coverage, the idea that it is the government’s job to ensure that all Americans have healthcare coverage. The law is so unpopular that the department of Health and Human Services (HHS) withheld publishing its rules for how states and doctors will be required to comply with the law (13,000 pages and counting) until after the 2012 election was safely over. If the law is so warm and fuzzy, why did Louisiana and other states have to file a Freedom of Information Act request just to ‘find out what’s in it’? Former supporters of the bill are openly expressing astonishment at the destruction they see happening around them, like the physician who writes “Medicare made the rules and now punishes doctors for following them”.
To fix what’s wrong with medical care in America, we need REAL health insurance along with liberty, voluntary cooperation, free markets, the price system and the virtues of the free people of America. A true health insurance market thriving under free-market competition will provide the greatest range of choices possible to all of us, including today’s uninsured. Such a market needs freedom and competition; not over-regulation, rationing and penalties; not a government takeover. Individuals, families and physicians should be the ones in charge; not the federal Department of Health and Human Services and committees that can’t be recalled by voters.
The Hippocratic oath, taken by physicians for over two thousand years, pledges: “First, do no harm”. America needs reform, but not just any reform. We cannot rush into top-down, government-directed economics out of an irresistible urge just to ‘do something’, convinced that “it can’t possibly get any worse”. It can always get worse. It is worse in almost every other country and is already getting worse here under Obamacare. Constructive reform has to be based on an accurate assessment of the circumstances and on sound economic principles.
Reversing Obamacare won’t be easy this late in the game. The Administration and die-hard supporters of the law aren’t standing down for a gentleman-general’s winter camp; to the contrary, they are armed with virtually unlimited resources and mobilized to put down any trace of rebellion. The element of surprise won’t be found in a frontal attack on an A.C.A. stronghold, like (metaphorically) George Washington’s ambush of the Hessians at Trenton. It will come, rather, from all of the former and fair-weather supporters who never expected that the rising costs, rationing, shortages, loss of liberty, restriction of choices and deteriorating quality would fall so heavily upon them personally.
But reverse it we must, because living under this law’s regime will be much dearer still than the cost of fighting it to the bitter end. The death panel rationing committee of the American citizenry has determined that this patient’s life is not worth the cost of prolonging. It’s time to pull the plug on Obamacare.
This article was adapted from the forthcoming book 'Pull the Plug on Obamacare', coming March 1 2013. Visit the Obamacare page for more information.
Tweet
More Health care reform resources on the Obamacare page.
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