Laws Are For Chumps by Pat Conrad MD
We are almost certainly in for another four years of cementing, expanding, protecting, amplifying, justifying, and continuing to force one of the biggest lies in U.S. government history, the Affordable Care Act. President Clinton’s Wife and her supporters will not deviate from the fiction that this is a wonderful program that has left us better off. It is so important for the anti-freedom Democrats and their cowardly GOP handmaidens to protect this all-consuming blob that laws no longer matter. Chief Justice John Roberts set the example, by reinterpreting the law away from its literal words and oral arguments in order to justify it. And when you can’t change to fit the law…just ignore it.
The sleuths at the AP tell us that the Obama Administration has failed to follow their own law, which required them to compensate insurers for more ill patients. Well of course they did! “Transitional reinsurance” was supposed to take money from employers and private health insurers, and give it to plans that faced higher claims. Well surprise, there were shortfalls in expected revenue – how can that be, when everyone’s premiums went up?? – and HHS just didn’t pay the Treasury as directed in the statute. Just you try to not pay the Treasury sometime.
The insurance companies are bastards for colluding with Obama in a sweetheart bribe that ripped us all off. But that in no way excuses the administration from following its own law. But hey, the list of laws to which this White House has given the finger is too long to bother reciting. Congressional Republicans will furrow their brows, write letters of great concern, hold a hearing or two, and not do a damn thing. For the administration, and the likely next one, the corruption, law breaking, lies, workers not hired, companies bankrupted, debt run up, households impoverished, doctors strangled, and patients denied will be worth the cause of expanding institutional compassion in the eyes of its champions. The law is a wreck for public purposes, and in its lawlessness is accomplishing exactly what it was intended to achieve – single payer.
The ACA was supposed to raise money by taxing Cadillac gold plated plans. These plans are mostly owned by union members, Government worker union members and non government worker. They have low deductible and copays, and great coverage. No surprise that the Democratic Party that passed the ACA and said it would put everyone in the same “equal” boat, and pay for that in that way, somehow has not enforced the tax on government workers and union workers that vote for them. Now the costs are passed onto others, and the government workers plans are paid for by the taxpayers.
Why innovate when you can obey? If everyone can be made to do the same thing – the fiction underlying the concept of Best Practices – then there will be standardization.
There is a difference between exploring innovative concepts and following rules while driving by looking in the rear view mirror. It’s the difference between the iPhone and the EMR. Patients talk about electronic medical records as though they were conceptually of the same standard as iPhone apps. Explain to them the difference between the two.
American Medicine is Going Postal. Expect the next ten years to bring us a synthesis of the US Postal Service and the VA. The “Midlevel Box” [see https://authenticmedicine.com/midlevelbox/%5D is sure to iterate into MB2.0 which will not need a human brain to prescribe and dispense antibiotics, painkillers, vaccines and what-have-you. Go, Dr. Watson, go!
The lethal flaw in American liberalism is a cruel contempt for any persons or ideas that deviate from the Official Understanding of the Problem. That is why poverty, war, hunger and homelessness do not get any better, but the programs set up to “work on them” are thriving. In Government Bureaucracy, the obligation is only to treat, not to cure; and even less so to prevent.
There is no squeamishness in American Liberalism about injuring people. First, they must be judged guilty by means of prejudice; then they can be punished without having to be understood. Those awful selfish doctors in the AMA? Crush them, away with them! They are complaining? Shut them up, for God’s sake! No thought should be paid to the idea that perhaps the doctors are decent people complaining about irrational processes that harm others. No, we know what you are complaining about, you greedy bastards! Shoot on suspicion, that’s the answer! This moral poison damages everything it touches, this arrogance and self-righteousness, this idea that the Wise will beat wisdom into their lessers. It repeats itself throughout history; it is hardly novel. But now it’s American Medicine’s turn.