The Patriot Post® · Chief Justice Roberts, Meet Obamacare

“Our doctors have told us to be prepared for the worst because right now we can hardly find a doctor.”

Liberals on the Supreme Court and in Congress refused to heed this warning as they brazenly imposed President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act on the American people. Under a cloud of controversy, Obamacare has now entered its third year.

In its 2012 decision on Obamacare, the U.S. Supreme Court based its ruling on a convoluted interpretation of law. In a 5-4 decision, Chief Justice John Roberts voted alongside liberal justices to clear the way for the implementation of Obamacare. Roberts’ overriding concern was if the individual mandate to force Americans to buy medical insurance should be labeled a tax or a fine. Human loss and suffering were inconsequential. The human toll could not be factored in based on legal constricts placed on the court. Decisions are to be based on law and not emotion. Regardless and predictably, the leftist jurists’ ideology of applying social justice, a primary tenet of socialism, infused their decisions. Conservatives on the bench voted against the individual mandate, which would force Americans to purchase medical insurance under coercion whether by a tax or fine, as unconstitutional.

Soon after its passage, Obamacare began claiming casualties. Front-line victims became early warnings of the pain and suffering – the desperation – to come. Few in seats of power took heed. Obama and Congress had, after all, exempted themselves from the medical nightmare they created along with a swath of their political cronies and supporters. Supreme Court justices remain exempt as well. Question: Why exempt themselves? What is it that they are afraid of?

Mid-2010, Americans were beginning to experience the creeping effects of socialized medicine. During a radio interview, a caller who identified himself as a life-long Democrat told me of the particular form of hell that he and his young paraplegic wife were going through due to Obamacare. The caller wanted to warn fellow Americans. His wife was already being abandoned by her doctors who feared cuts in reimbursements. Doctors pointed to mandated cuts in Medicare monies being shifted to fund Obamacare. What follows in a limited transcript of my on-air interview with the caller about his wife’s ordeal.

“Our doctors have told us to be prepared for the worst because right now we can hardly find a doctor. We’re not in a small town, and when we go to find a new doctor for a new problem, a podiatrist or specialty doctor of any kind, we go through many, many, many, many names before one finally decides to take us. They tell us upfront that you are going to probably end-up being billed the 20% because we [the doctors] know that we don’t get reimbursed for that and they’ve changed their paperwork. You used to be able to pick up the phone and call any doctor and they say come on in, we take Medicare, we take QMB – now I spend two and three days trying to find one doctor with other doctors helping me to find a doctor that would accept the program. Through the Bush time, we thought GW was the worst thing that had ever happened to America.  But, we were able to keep everything we had.  Nothing was affected, our health plan was not affected, the doctors were not affected, nothing happened to us badly. Well, now since Obama has taken over we can no longer …” (Voice cracks.)

The caller explained further, that in desperation, he took his wife to a clinic. Clinic doctors informed him that they were not qualified to treat his wife, nor could they admit patients to a hospital. Frantic, he recruited the help of others in his continued search to find a qualified doctor who would accept their Medicare/Qualified Medicare Beneficiary program.  Eventually, he said, a 74-year-old doctor, in semi-retirement, finally agreed to treat his wife.

As a result of that call, I have investigated first-hand accounts and concerns of those who provide medical care to our mentally and physically disabled and to our seniors. Medical care providers expect the human toll, from warehousing patients to loss of life, to be extensive. Obamacare results in fewer doctors available to middle and lower income patients. Corruption is embedded in Obama’s Affordable Care Act as it fosters breeding grounds for less skilled and less ethical doctors and clinics to run Obamacare mills based on quantity of patients and not quality of care.

A recent interview I did with an emergency room doctor disclosed traumatizing choices that doctors are already being forced to make. An experienced emergency room doctor found himself trapped between admitting two critically ill patients or adhering to newly applied government regulations. His hospital’s funding was under new government-imposed financial guidelines. Costs were to be  lowered by turning away short-term, repeat Medicare patients. The doctor explains that he is now caught in a regulatory vice:

“As more and more are added to the Obamacare rolls, there will be less and less access. People will get sicker and yes, people will die because of it. I had a sick and sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach today after both of these incidents.”

Facing the prospects of turning away dying patients or facing a hospital reprimand for admitting them, this doctor chose patient care over job security. The doctor expects to retire in a few years.

Former top aide to Obama, Jeffrey Crowley, helped design how Obamacare is being implemented. Crowley openly admits that there are serious flaws saying, “We know it’s going to be messy.” “Messy?"  Is that what President Obama, liberal Democrats and socialists on the Supreme Court call the heartache, suffering and sorrow that is already being faced by Americans and their families?  Chief Justice Roberts and his liberal jurists on the high court have torpedoed the American economy along with the American health care system making the pain not just medical, but financial? Workers nationwide complain that their paychecks have been hit with the first-round of Obamacare taxes resulting in less take-home pay. It is just the beginning.

The latest Rasmussen Reports survey reveals that a 54% majority of Americans expect the U.S. healthcare system to get worse over the next four years. Benjamin Domenech of Health Care News reports that the latest Kaiser/Harvard survey found, "Obamacare’s Unpopularity Grows in New Poll.” The survey reports that the disapproval of Obamacare “was mostly driven by an increase in opposition from the politically significant independent voters – the survey found 57% of independents opposed the law, up from 41 percent last month.” The House of Representatives currently has the authority to defund the administrative arm of the Affordable Care Act and effectively nullify Obamacare. Having been given that authority by the American people, the latest polls indicate that they should use it – and then expand sales of personal medical insurance into the free-market to be sold at competitive rates across state lines.

See further analysis by Sharon Sebastian here.

Sharon Sebastian (www.DarwinsRacists.com) is a columnist, commentator, author, and contributor to various forms of media including cultural and political broadcasts, print, and online websites. In addition to the heated global debate on creation vs. evolution, her second book, “Darwin’s Racists: Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow,” highlights the impact of Social Darwinism’s Marxist/Socialist underpinnings on the culture, the faith and current policy out of Washington.