The Affordable Healthcare Act a.k.a. Obamacare

We all can agree that healthcare is a service sought by all and needed by all. The question is "Who should control healthcare"?

Ask yourself: "Do I want to be in control of my own healthcare decisions, free to consult the physicians I know and entrust my health to? Or do I want to be at the mercy of Government administrators, employees, and insurance companies?" Through the Affordable Care Act (ACA), commonly referred to as Obamacare, the government has attempted to directly interfere with our lives, our bodies, our minds, our money, our jobs, our security, and our privacy.

The ACA is a bureaucratic cancer that is destroying our healthcare system.The ACA neither improves access to healthcare services nor increases the quality of the healthcare that patients receive. What the ACA does accomplish is the replacement of personal choice through Government mandate.

Healthcare is a business and it comprises 1/6 of the U.S. economy. It is the most regulated industry in the American economy and it is an industry whose cost to deliver services is neither decided nor controlled by the doctors and the healthcare professionals that do the work. For every dollar that gets spent on healthcare, a significant portion of that dollar goes to cover the Government's administrative and oversight costs, and the administrative costs of the insurance companies. Our Government has come to the conclusion that access to healthcare is the same as access to health insurance. Our Government has also come to the conclusion that access to healthcare insurance ensures access to low-cost, healthcare that is best run by Government bureaucrats. This is a false conclusion.

Since the ACA was passed in 2009 and enacted in 2010, it has become quite clear that the Federal Government is too big to succeed when it comes to controlling the most private and personal aspects of our lives. The ACA, including its amendments, was 2045 pages long. There are over 20,000 pages of regulations for its implementation, including 21 new taxes. After 4 years, the Government cannot make this law work for the American people. It is clear that Obamacare needs to be repealed or systematically amended according to our constitution, and not through executive orders and bureaucratic process. It is time to downsize the Government's control of our healthcare and our lives and let the doctors and healthcare providers determine the business models that will improve both the access to healthcare services and the quality of healthcare delivery and return the control of our lives back to us.

Veterans Administration Healthcare

Avik Roy recently wrote an article illustrating how Obamacare, which I oppose, is only two steps from the VA system that currently is failing the Veterans of this Country. While I have already explored some of the problems with Obamacare , I want to address some problems with the VA system that exist, as they were explained to me by someone in the VA system.

The Veterans Administration is culturally, socially and systematically deficient as it is the worlds largest public health care system. It operates as a managed care system. There are no financial incentives to increase the care of Veterans.

First of all, the system is not under funded. It is estimated that the Department of Veterans Affairs spent up to $85.6 Million on unauthorized commitments according to the Washington Times. The reason for unauthorized commitments is two fold: antiquated records systems that do not interface with the Department of Defense (DOD) systems and the guaranteed pay for VA doctors.

Since the Dept. of the VA is currently separate from the DOD, they do not share medical records which leads to redundancies in tests and procedures. A system in which data cannot, or is not, shared with the push of the button which is the way of the past and not the movement of the future. Also, without DOD involvement, fiscal and legal oversight is weak and not punishable under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).

Since doctors are paid set wages, they do not have any incentive for services provided to patients. This lack of accountability allows doctors to see as many or as few patients as they wish, but it also allows them to see patients who should not, or do not, fall under the jurisdiction of the Department of Veterans Affairs. Patients being helped without proper vetting are likely the cause of a large amount of the $85.6 million in potentially fraudulent services.

While the waste statistic is appalling, there is even more waste built into the system. For example, in Mississippi, two VA hospitals within 5 miles of each other have requisitioned identical equipment, which is a direct result from a lack of central monitoring. Equipment redundancy can be useful in high density areas, but this redundancy of orders can also lead to back ups in the system. In turn these supply and equipment back ups in the supply chain lead to the lapses in care, which bought the problems with VA to light in the first place.

Stay tuned... more to follow..

Paid for by “Nancy Hoyt for Congress”