By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Writer
Anyone wondering what universal health care might look like under President-elect Barack Obama won’t have to look very far. If Obama and Senator Ted Kennedy have their way, Massachusett’s disastrous health care plan may soon be imposed upon the rest of the nation.
Writing in the Washington Times, lawyer and syndicated columnist Phyllis Schlafly outlines the true situation in the Bay State’s mandatory health care plan which is so bad one doctor told her, “this is not the type of medical care anyone with a modicum of intelligence would want.”
“Ted Kennedy and Barack Obama are planning that the new Democratic Congress’ first order of business will be to extend the Massachusetts health-care mistake to all 50 states,” Schlafly writes. “Like other legislative rush-acts (i.e., the 2007 amnesty bill and the 2008 bailouts), details are currently withheld to avoid giving members of Congress and the public adequate time to analyze the bill before the vote is called.”
If the Massachusetts plan takes effect, the average American will no longer have immediate access to medical care, she says. “They will have the long waits and massive new taxpayer costs that the Massachusetts plan has produced.”
For instance, doctors with more patients than available hours conduct “group visits” where patients with similar complaints are all seen at the same time.
“The doctor does not ask the patients to take off their clothes in front of the group; he makes do with less effective, fully-clothed examinations,”Schlafly writes. “The group session consists mostly of hearing other people’s complaints, while the doctor dishes out advice in front of all the patients. Privacy and modesty are gone, but you can pick up the germs of the other sick patients in the room with you.”
One doctor actually defended this practice to the Boston Globe, saying it spared him having to deliver “canned speeches” to a lot of people with the same complaints.
At Holyoke Health Center in Boston, patients wait four months simply to get an appointment, Schlafly said. This causes some patients to go to costly emergency rooms for routine visits. And while emergency rooms handle routine matters and take medical histories, people who really need urgent care wait in line.
“In parts of western Massachusetts, which is non-urban like most of the United States, the wait has grown longer than one year just to get a physical.”
The cost of this inferior health care is even more troubling.
“The Massachusetts plan is a fiscal disaster, costing far more than estimated, with no end in sight,” Schlafly writes. “ Massachusetts is wealthier than most states, but this plan threatens to bankrupt even the Bay State.”
The Massachusetts plan forces people to buy insurance under threat of having to pay a penalty on their income tax return.
“State politicians had promised voters not to worry about costs because Massachusetts would collect $95 million in fees in the first year from small businesses that do not insure their employees,” Schlafly writes. “But those fees were never collected because small businesses cannot afford them, and taxpayers are forced to ante up that shortfall.”
Even more disturbing is that Massachusetts taxpayers were not told the new health care plan forces public funding for abortion for anyone who wants one, not just the poor.
“Mr. Kennedy’s plan will likely try to force Americans nationwide to pay for all abortions as the Massachusetts plan does, perhaps by regulations if not by statute.”
Schlafly warns Americans that this disastrous ideas is supported by former Senate Majority Leader Thomas Daschle, the new head of Health and Human Services, who is currently serving as a high-paid health-care consultant for a lobbying firm.
“So much for Mr. Obama’s promise to change Washington, eliminate the influence of lobbyists, and avoid conflicts of interest!” she writes.
Daschle is holding town hall meetings this month to create the illusion of public support for the Kennedy plan. “As HHS secretary, Mr. Daschle will write the regulatory details that Congress doesn’t dare to put in the proposed statute,”Schlafly warns.
Because Obama could use his giant campaign data base to pressure Congress into speedy action, Schlafly says “Americans will have to protest quickly if they want to prevent the mandatory and expensive Massachusetts plan from being forced on the country.”
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Phyllis Schlafly is the author of Supremacists: The Tyranny of Judges and How to Stop It, available in our store at http://womenofgrace.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=287
