ObamaCare: Another step toward corporate socialized medicine in the US

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (2010), more commonly referred to as ObamaCare, has become one of the most controversial pieces of legislation passed by the Democrat-controlled, 111th U.S. Congress during President Obama's administration. Despite significant political opposition and poll-after-poll evincing the American people's strong dissatisfaction with a health care plan that was correctly seen as further socializing American medicine, ObamaCare [Figure 1] was passed by the two houses of the U.S. Congress and signed into law by the president on March 23, 2010. Figure 1 U.S. President Barack Obama at the White House, flanked by activist physicians, expounding on ObamaCare (expansion of corporate socialized medicine in the U.S.) One stated goal of the plan is ostensibly to “expand access to insurance for nearly 30 million Americans.” And to accomplish this “reform,” the Obama administration has introduced the elements of compulsion — and more ominously, unconstitutional powers. To increase access to insurance for 30 million uninsured Americans, ObamaCare forces insurance companies and managed care plans to extend coverage to people with pre-existing conditions; in effect, converting conventional rules of indemnity coverage (i.e., coverage for unforeseen medical illnesses and injuries) into prepayment for chronic medical care. But perhaps the most egregious section of ObamaCare is to force uninsured Americans to purchase medical insurance. Noncompliance with this “reform” will trigger heavy fines imposed by the federal government as a penalty. This is referred to as the health insurance mandate, and it is quite different from National Health Insurance as in Canada,[2,3,11] National Health Service as in Great Britain,[6] or socialized medicine in France, Germany, and Japan.[12,16] Thus, I make a relative distinction between the Obama administration's plan for health care as corporate socialized medicine (i.e., public-private, corporativist partnerships) and the fully socialized medicine as in most European countries.[7–10] The price of socialized medicine in every country in which it has been implemented is the usurpation of liberty, the erosion of individual autonomy, the gradual loss of the freedom to choose – working in parallel with the rationing of medical services and technology because the raison d’etre of socialism is to control the population by depriving the people of freedom and keeping them subservient and dependent on the State. The free enterprise system in the United States has traditionally relied on free choice in a free market place, whether we are talking about buying a home, an automobile, computers – or medical care. Government compulsion and social engineering are not well received by free marketeers and individualists in our society. Small steps, incremental “reforms,” have taken place in American medicine via increased rules and regulations regarding utilization and rationing of services, coverage, payments to physicians, etc. But further large-scale attempts to socialize American medicine have been repeatedly defeated since 1965, when Medicare (i.e., health care for the elderly) and Medicaid (i.e., health care for the indigent) were instituted.[4,5,9] A good example of this rejection of socialized medicine was the failed attempt by President Bill Clinton to revamp the U.S. health care system in 1993–1994. The Health Security Act of 1993 was a grandiose effort to further socialized American medicine in a corporativist direction,[8–10] and was dubbed “HillaryCare” because the effort was led by former First Lady Hillary Clinton [Figure 2], who serves today as President Barack Obama's Secretary of State. Figure 2 Hillary Rodham Clinton during the health care debate of 1993

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