As a physician, I know well the problems with Obamacare. I don’t think anyone has more disdain for this big government takeover of our healthcare system. It needs to be stopped, and we must replace it with reforms that move us in the opposite direction.
I will vote to repeal Obamacare in January. I believe it is something that the Republican Congress must do.
However, in our fervor to repeal Obamacare, conservatives should not forget or abandon the principles that make us conservative in the first place. Quirky, arcane rules allow Congress to repeal Obamacare with a simple majority but only if Congress passes a budget first.
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As part of an ObamaCare initiative meant to reward quality care, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is allocating some $1.5 billion in Medicare payments to hospitals based on criteria that include patient-satisfaction surveys. Among the questions: “During this hospital stay, how often did the hospital staff do everything they could to help you with your pain?” And: “How often was your pain well controlled?”
To many physicians and lawmakers struggling to contain the nation’s opioid crisis, tying a patient’s feelings about pain management to a hospital’s bottom line is deeply misguided––if not downright dangerous. “The government is telling us we need to make sure a patient’s pain is under control,” says Dr. Nick Sawyer, a health-policy fellow at the UC Davis department of emergency medicine. “It’s hard to make them happy without a narcotic. This policy is leading to ongoing opioid abuse.”
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The Affordable Care Act’s tax increases are many, two are front and center this month: the individual and employer mandates. They were both supposed to increase coverage, but in reality they’re limiting career opportunities and taking more out of families’ and individuals’ wallets.
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This week, we learned that ObamaCare enrollments are nearly 40% below the original projections—further proof that the American people want nothing to do with this flawed system.
Under the Obama administration, we are becoming a nation of rules—not laws—dictated by a president and a White House who are more concerned with pursuing a partisan political agenda than they are with serving the American people.
Nowhere is the disregard for the laws of our nation—and the failure of our bloated, inept, partisan government—more obvious than in the way the Democrats foisted ObamaCare on us. And the way in which it has utterly failed to help Americans get the quality, affordable health care we were promised.
Presidential candidate Carly Fiorina outlines her blueprint to repeal ObamaCare and promote the free market in health care.