Obamacare throws the baby out with the bath water!
By State Rep. Dr. Mark Shelton
Texas Insider Report: AUSTIN Texas As a pediatrician I work with patients within the health care industry every day. Whether caring for a young patient on CHIP Medicaid or private insurance I have spent my career immersed in the medical world and its complicated workings.
Health care is people care and it is not a one size fits all" for our population.
Our health is very personal and unique to each individual and changes with age and life circumstances. Likewise the problems and solutions are neither simple nor can they be molded into a single government post office-styled bureaucratic solution where people are treated like numbers.
What are the two main problems? Clearly they are access and cost.
Does Obamacare (our new federal health care law also known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act) really solve these problems? The answer is no. Obamacare only masks the problem with big government. In pediatrician jargon Obamacare throws the baby out with the bath water!
The truth is the same health care access problems caused by economic variances we now face for the indigent and uninsured will largely still exist under Obamacare. In other words simply calling CHIP Medicaid or Medicare by a different name (Obamacare) does not solve the access problem--- which in some ways is really more of a utilization problem than a real access problem according to the U.S. Agency for Health care Research and Quality (AHRQ)… see statistics cited below.
And what about cost? By and large most government employees are outstanding public servants but the government model is not a model for efficiency or quality. In fact aside from the military the government model is at best a model for mediocrity and delay. Furthermore Obamacare proposes yet ANOTHER layer of unaccountable government bureaucracy (the Independent Payment Advisory Board- IPAB) to reduce
spending on Medicare with no expertise or regard to patient care or need. In short Obamacare proposes to herd us all like cattle brand us all with a number and then asks that we wait in line like at the post office or DMV!
Again people are not numbers! When it comes to health care each person is unique and different. As physicians we treat the patient not the disease!
Additionally the government is extremely culpable on the cost front. Artificial government price controls and unfunded mandates have grossly distorted the US health care market prompting cost-shifting which has driven up the cost of health care and private insurance. Obamacare only accelerates this vicious cycle!
And do you really want a non-physician government bureaucrat making your personal medical treatment decisions? I dont! I want a graduate of a medical school making medical decisions for my family.
And as for the issue of utilization cited above a recent government study (AHRQ) found that 5 of our population consumes 50 of the health care costs. MANDATING health insurance with MORE GOVERNMENT and MORE BUREAUCRATIC oversight does not solve this critical concern. Strategies for helping these 5 (most of whom are in serious health situations) should be pursued not by watering down the good things that are working for the other 95 of the American health care system but by targeting this 5 with realistic solutions that fit their unique circumstances. Here again even in public policy we need to treat the patients as people not as numbers.
Certainly too the debate over Obamacare is as much over partisan politics as it is about medical and economic concerns. As I am currently a Republican candidate for State Senate I have very different views than my Obama Democrat opponent on this serious topic of free market versus government solutions to health care and others things.
In fact an extensive study of legislative voting records by Rice University says my Obama Democrat opponent Wendy Davis is the most out-of-step State Senator in Texas. The professor who conducted this study noted that State Senate District 10 is conservative but Davis is unabashedly liberal" and the most liberal voting state senator in all of Texas who lives north of Houston.
But partisanship aside why does my opponent support Obamacare? In part because her largest contributors are ambulance chasing personal injury trial lawyers. Their abusive lawsuits almost destroyed health care in Texas forcing emergency and trauma rooms to close down across the state. Voters responded in 2003 by voting for a statewide constitutional amendment setting non-economic damage caps. The ambulance chasing trial lawyers are now hoping that through a national health care system they can overturn these caps. While Davis supports them I strongly disagree with this view of health care being a get rich lottery for trial lawyers.
Davis also favors mandates and penalties on those who dont get private insurance. Here again I firmly believe there is a difference between insurance for cars and people… though some people like my opponent do drive others crazy!
Seriously changes are needed in our health care system but Obamacare is not the solution and in fact is a government prescribed cure worse then disease itself. If the U.S. Supreme Court declares Obamacare unconstitutional we should not declare victory but Republicans Democrats and Independents alike should affirm our resolve to fix whats really wrong in our health care system. Regardless of the Courts decision I also believe we will need new leadership in Washington and in State Senate District 10 that reflects the views of the people served. This would be only fitting as elections are dynamically where people and numbers are really one and the same.
State Representative and Dr. Mark Shelton a practicing Pediatrician is a Republican Candidate for State Senate District 10 near Ft. Worth Texas.
