Blog and News

Rasmussen Reports conducted polling of the American people's views of the Supreme Court following the court's decision on ObamaCare. Rasumussen's findings include the following: "A growing number now believe that the high court is too liberal and that justices pursue their own agenda rather than acting impartially. A week ago, 36% said the court was doing a good or an excellent job. That’s down to 33% today. However, the big change is a rise in negative perceptions. Today, 28% say the Supreme Court is doing a poor job. That’s up 11 points over the past week." 

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In case you missed it, last week D4PC's Dr. Hal Scherz, MD was a guest on a radio show in which he discussed the impact of ObamaCare on the doctor patient relationship and the future of delivery of medicine. 

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Our own Dr. Meg Edison, VP of the Michigan state chapter, has invested the time to create a stirring video about what we as doctors and concerned citizens should do about Obamacare. We hope you will invest the time to watch it: 

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Welcome to D4PC "Morning Rounds", your daily review of healthcare news and information from Washington, DC and around the nation. These briefings will keep you up to date on recent developments and our effort to replace the PPACA with patient-centered reforms that protect the doctor-patient relationship and preserve individual freedom of choice.  

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The federal government has begun to shape the basic health benefits package that will be offered to Americans through the ObamaCare exchanges.  As stated by one report, "until now, designing benefits has been the job of insurers, employers and state officials. But the new health care law requires insurance companies to provide at least the federally approved package if they want to sell to small businesses, families and individuals through new state markets set to open in 2014." 

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The U.S. House of Representatives draft legislation to fund HHS for the coming year contains numerous provisions to deny funding for the implementation of ObamaCare. Included in the bill is the proposed elimination of $8.6 billion of funding contained in ObamaCare and a provision that would block funding the bill for the implementation of ObamaCare for as long as the law is being challenged in the courts. 

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Welcome to D4PC "Morning Rounds", your daily review of healthcare news and information from Washington, DC and around the nation. These briefings will keep you up to date on recent developments and our effort to replace the PPACA with patient-centered reforms that protect the doctor-patient relationship and preserve individual freedom of choice. 

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While Washington elites made numerous promises about the benefits of ObamaCare, particularly in regards to the uninsured, the uninsured remain rightfully skeptical about the benefits of the law.  According to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll, "half (47%) of the uninsured do not expect to be affected at all by the health reform law.... [and 14%] expect to be hurt by the law, mainly because they worry they will be required to buy coverage they cannot afford." 

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Welcome to D4PC "Morning Rounds", your daily review of healthcare news and information from Washington, DC and around the nation. These briefings will keep you up to date on recent developments and our effort to replace the PPACA with patient-centered reforms that protect the doctor-patient relationship and preserve individual freedom of choice. 

Read More

Welcome to D4PC "Morning Rounds", your daily review of healthcare news and information from Washington, DC and around the nation. These briefings will keep you up to date on recent developments and our effort to replace the PPACA with patient-centered reforms that protect the doctor-patient relationship and preserve individual freedom of choice.
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Senator John Thune (SD) has written a new opinion piece in the Washington Times detailing the call by former Obama Administration official, Peter Orszag, for the government to force Americans to begin buying long-term care insurance to ensure that the CLASS Act is fully funded.  The CLASS Act is a new entitlement program that created by ObamaCare whereby the federal government is selling long-term care insurance.  Under the CLASS Act, taxpayers can voluntarily pay premiums to the government in exchange for the government's promise to cover their long-term care costs later in life. 

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Welcome to D4PC "Morning Rounds", your daily review of healthcare news and information from Washington, DC and around the nation. These briefings will keep you up to date on recent developments and our effort to replace the PPACA with patient-centered reforms that protect the doctor-patient relationship and preserve individual freedom of choice. 

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A new report from the Beacon Hill Institute at Suffolk University reaches several conclusions about the 2006 Massachusetts health care law (commonly referred to as "RomneyCare" after former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney).  President Obama has stated on several occasions that RomneyCare served as the model for his own health care initiative, PPACA (or "ObamaCare").  In this regard, the costs and consequences of RomneyCare serve as an earlier warning signal of what doctors, patients, employers and taxpayers can expect nationwide as a result of ObamaCare. 

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D4PC "Morning Rounds" for Thursday July 14, 2011

Welcome to D4PC "Morning Rounds", your daily review of healthcare news and information from Washington, DC and around the nation. These briefings will keep you up to date on recent developments and our effort to replace the PPACA with patient-centered reforms that protect the doctor-patient relationship and preserve individual freedom of choice.
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"Key Democrat Testifies Against Health Reform Bill's Cost-Control Panel, thehill.com 

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Tomas J. Philipson and Eric Sun, respectively of the University of Chicago and Stanford University, have produced a report for the Manhattan Institute entitled "Blue Pill or Red Pill: The Limits of Comparative Effectiveness Research." Their report explains the fallacy of the over-reliance by President Obama and PPACA on comparative effectiveness research (CER) to reduce costs. The President's logic suggests that if, on average, the "blue pill" is as effective for the average patient as the "red pill" and cheaper that the correct course of treatment should be the blue pill. The problem is, as the Executive Summary for Philipson and Sun's report states, "the average patient is not the same as any particular individual patient. Declaring a treatment most effective based on an average is a medical and an economic error, for two reasons." 

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D4PC "Morning Rounds" Monday June 27, 2011

Welcome to D4PC "Morning Rounds", your daily review of healthcare news and information from Washington, DC and around the nation. These briefings will keep you up to date on recent developments and our effort to replace the PPACA with patient-centered reforms that protect the doctor-patient relationship and preserve individual freedom of choice.

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"The Waits That Matter", John Maa, MD in the New England Journal of Medicine

The tragic story related in "The Waits that Matter" is not just a case report, but provides a poignant illustration of a serious public health hazard. Emergency Department crowding is such a significant problem that a monthly newsletter is devoted to the topic: ED Overcrowding Solutions. Unfortunately, the new health care reform law passed last year will make the situation worse when 32 million more people are added to the health care system. Recent surveys of physicians and ED administrators verify this concern.

In the last 20 years, the number of EDs decreased nearly 30% while the number of patient visits increased 35%. Closures are more likely to occur in urban areas which service the poor. Since almost half of the newly covered under the PPACA are expected to be on Medicaid, these regions have the greatest need for expanded ED availability--just the opposite of what's happening. Mandated universal coverage has not solved the problem in Massachusetts where ER visits are increasing due to an increasing physician shortage.

Mandating the purchase of insurance and expanding public programs will not increase access or bring down health care costs. What is needed is a system which will address the causes of over-priced health care while maintaining patient freedom of choice. What is needed is The D4PC "Prescription" for Health Care Reform.

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Obamacare- "A Healthcare Reform for All?", American Thinker

For nearly 15 years, 90% of the American insured have been able to move freely from one health insurance policy to the next without any risk of being considered "uninsurable." They also are protected from having a medical condition that existed before switching policies (a "pre-existing condition") excluded from coverage. Why was HIPPA portability not extended to all Americans regardless of whether they buy group or individual health insurance coverage? That is a great question you should ask your elected official. For if the legislators had added just one sentence all Americans would have coverage for "pre-existing conditions" providing that they continue to maintain health insurance coverage.

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"Massachusetts Finds New System Not Cutting Health Costs", Boston Globe

In a mixed economy (a mixture of free market and government controls) like the American HCS, normal free market competition does not function and an efficient allocation of resources can not emerge. Belief in the need for government action to correct undesirable economic results lead to a call for more government meddling and an endless amount of regulations and bureaucracy.

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"The Truth About the Canadian Healthcare System", Frank Rosenbloom, MD in Cascade Policy Institute

"Other influential people have shared their concerns about the serious deficiencies in the Canadian health care system. Perhaps the most important of these is the man some call the ”father” of the Canadian health care system, Claude Castonguay. Castonguay was the pioneer of socialized medicine in Quebec, which gave impetus to the establishment of a nationwide socialized medical care law in 1966. However, in 2008 Castonguay had this to say about the health care system: “If nothing is done, at one point we will reach a crisis point. This is why we say it is urgent to act. How could this be? Haven’t we been led to believe that the Canadian health care system is financially stable? In fact, the system is close to collapse.

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"There's No Average Cancer Patient", Gregory Conko in Wall Street Journal

Two good op-ed pieces on the breast cancer drug Avastin. Both authors address the issue that the FDA is only concerned with populations and averages, not with real, existing, suffering human beings. The problem only arises, however, because payment for these treatments has been collectivized, either via government health care programs or through the cultural acceptance of an egalitarian "right" to health care. If each person was thought to have a right only to the health care they could pay for themselves or obtain with charity assistance, "cost effectiveness" would be an entirely personal and private decision.


"The Avastin Travesty", Thomas Bowden in Pajamas Media

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"How Obamacare Destroys Your Privacy", Betsy McCaughey in the New York Post

"The 2009 stimulus and the Obama health law enacted last year established a national electronic health database that will hold and display your lifelong medical history -- making it accessible to a troubling number of strangers, including government employees and a variety of health-care personnel. Government will oversee the network linking doctors and hospitals. Doctors will have to enter your treatments in the database, and your doctors' decisions will be monitored for compliance with federal guidelines". 

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Welcome to D4PC "Morning Rounds", your daily review of healthcare news and information from Washington, DC and around the nation. These briefings will keep you up to date on recent developments and our effort to replace the PPACA with patient-centered reforms that protect the doctor-patient relationship and preserve individual freedom of choice.

"The Affordable Care Act Pushes the Limits of Constitutionality" 

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This week, the United States Senate had an opportunity to consider an amendment offered by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas. Her amendment, numbered 423, would completely halt all implementation until of PPACA until the courts have completed their review of the constitutionality of the individual mandate and the overall law.

The Senate did not vote on this amendment this past week but may have a chance to vote on the amendment when the Senate returns to complete its work on the underlying bill in the week of June 20th.
 
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David B. Rivkin, Jr. and Lee A. Casey have an excellent commentary on why the Obama Administration is having trouble in the courts. They suggest that the Administration has consistently changed their arguments defending the law as the previous argument is exposed for its constitutionally suspect nature.

They write that:

In enacting the individual mandate, Congress purported to rely on its power to regulate interstate commerce and, in the process, reach individuals who are already engaged in that commerce. But the individual mandate does not regulate commerce, interstate or otherwise. It simply decrees that all Americans, unless specially exempted, must have a congressionally prescribed level of health-insurance coverage regardless of any economic activity in which they may be engaged. Requiring individuals to act simply because they exist is the defining aspect of the general police power that Congress lacks.

The government's lawyers, recognizing this fundamental constitutional reality, have tried to rewrite the law so that it can withstand judicial scrutiny. They have claimed that the individual mandate is a tax, despite common sense, judicial precedent, and numerous statements to the contrary by the law's sponsors and President Obama. They have also argued that ObamaCare does not actually impose a mandate on inactive citizens, but rather regulates how individuals will pay for their health care. As Solicitor General Neal Katyal recently put it, the mandate is "about failure to pay, not failure to buy." This is plainly wrong. The law requires that everyone have health insurance—without regard to whether or how they buy or pay for medical services.

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Reason's Peter Suderman has an interesting article the explains that regulations promulgated as a result of ObamaCare will not be subject to President Obama's executive order to agencies to review potentially burdensome regulations.

Suderman notes that The Hill reported that Sherry Glied, an official with HHS, commented that HHS was confident in its analysis of the impact of the ObamaCare regulations and that HHS doesn’t need to review those rules again. Glied testified: “nothing has changed to make [HHS] look at them” (meaning ObamaCare regulations).

Questioning this assertion, Suderman stated: “Nothing, eh? Not the widespread rejection of the proposed rules governing ObamaCare's accountable care organizations? Not the consternation over the law's medical loss ratio requirements, which the administration has already waived for Maine after noting that the rule “has a reasonable likelihood of destabilizing the Maine individual health insurance market?” Not the 1,000-plus individual waivers the administration has granted allowing businesses and unions to get out of a number of the law's specific requirements? No, I guess there's no reason at all to think that any of the health care law's rules might be in need of review.”

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Jennifer Rubin of The Washington Post's Opinion section delves into the issue of cost-shifting and the role this issue has played in the appeal of the Florida multi-state lawsuit. During oral arguments before the 11th Circuit, the government argued the law was constitutional and the individual mandate was necessary to remedy the alleged burden placed on the healthcare system by cost-shifting.

Rubin first points out that: "As a preliminary matter, this sort of rationale is inappropriate for constitutional analysis. If the Constitution prohibits the government from forcing you to buy something you don’t want, why does a policy argument (cost-shifting) suddenly bestow constitutional legitimacy on the individual mandate?"

Rubin then points out that not only is the basis for the individual mandate on shaky constitutional ground but it is also unsupported by the facts. She cites a Yuval Levin June 9, 2011 post on National Review Online and a Wall Street Journal article by John F. Cogan, R. Glenn Hubbard and Daniel Kessler that demonstrates that Congress relied, as Rubin says, "on sloppy, flawed studies to come up with the cost-shifting rationale."

Read the full article here... 

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Minnesota's Star Tribune reports that the Mayo Clinic opposes the proposed Accountable Care Organizations (ACO) rules contained in the PPACA and will not participate in the ACO program.

The Rochester-based clinic, according to the paper, "is raising questions about accountable care organizations, or ACOs, which are supposed to be updated -- and better -- versions of health maintenance organizations. Approved as part of the 2010 health care law, they are designed to improve care and cuts costs by over half a billion dollars a year."

Dr. Douglas Wood, Mayo's chairman of health care policy and research, said that the Mayo Clinic does not want to significantly change from its current practices which they believes is already able to provide care in an efficient, patient-friendly manner. Wood said that Mayo would not "participate in a Medicare accountable care organization under the circumstances proposed."

Read the Full Article Here.....  

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From our friends at The Heritage Foundation...

One of the unintended (but certainly predictable) consequences of ObamaCare is that: "employers are being forced to drop their coverage in order to remain profitable. Thus, many of their employees will have no choice but the state exchanges for health care coverage."

"Small business is the lifeblood of the American economy, and employers are now being forced to reckon with new health care coverage mandates on top of a host of new and costly regulations in other areas. All of these regulations are expensive barriers that discourage entrepreneurship and job creation."

Read the full article here... 

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From the Los Angeles Times...

"After nearly three hours of argument Wednesday, the three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals seemed prepared to declare at least part of last year's law unconstitutional.

"The law's requirement that nearly everyone buy health insurance by
2014 is the question at the heart of the constitutional challenge. The argument that the mandate exceeds Congress' power initially was waved aside by many legal commentators, but it has now sharply divided the federal courts."

Read the full article here... 

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From the Heartland Institute...

Louisiana's Republican Governor, Bobby Jindal, has announced his state will not create a health insurance exchange mandated by the Patient Protection and Accountable Care Act.

Other Republican governors, such as Nathan Deal in Georgia, Susana Martinez in New Mexico, Rick Perry in Texas, and C.L. "Butch" Otter in Idaho, have announced opposition, vetoed bills, or issued executive orders as ways to prevent implementation of a health exchange.

Florida's governor, Rick Scott, also a Republican, has stood adamantly against the exchanges.

Read the full article on Heartland's Health Care News blog. 

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Analysis of the problems with the two main proposals for bringing down health care costs from the National Center for Policy Analysis. Bottom line: they won't.

"...let me be the first to open Pandora’s box and reveal three unpleasant truths.

"First, health care spending is growing at twice the rate of growth of our income — clearly an unsustainable and undesirable spending path.

"Second, any plan to reduce the growth rate of federal spending on health care without doing something about health care spending as a whole will necessarily shift costs — to the elderly, to the poor, to state governments, and to anybody other than the federal government.

"Third, neither party is offering a serious plan to control health care spending as a whole..."

Read the full column here. 

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From USA Today...

"Three federal appeals court judges, all appointed by Democratic presidents, will hear arguments Tuesday on the constitutionality of a new federal health care law that requires most Americans to obtain insurance.

"The hearing -- marking the first appellate review of the law that is the centerpiece of President Obama's domestic agenda -- was scheduled months ago. But only early today, as part of longstanding custom, did the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit here reveal the names of the three judges on the panel taking up the case."

Continue reading... 

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Kathleen Spitzer:  Wall Street Journal

Another case of abuse of power by HHS Secretary Sebelius:

“This is a threat to every health CEO in America. If Forest wants to continue to sell its drugs to Medicare, Medicaid and the Veterans Administration -- the biggest buyers of pharmaceuticals -- it will have to change management. Losing the federal government as a customer is potentially crippling to a drug company." 

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