I don’t know about you, but I can’t decide who I am madder at; the radical left Democratic party that passed the 3,000 page Obamacare catastrophe under the cover of dark, peddling it with nothing but bald-faced lies and demagogic clap-trap;[read_more] or Republican party leaders who have become the handmaiden to the special interests, ignoring working class Americans.
By now everyone is well aware (many of us knew it long before the law passed) that the President and the leadership of the radical Democrats deliberately lied about the proposed legislation. Not only were all the promises about Obamacare not true, even the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts, joined the deceit by deciding a fee in the legislation was actually a tax – thus giving the pretense of Constitutionality to this nightmare.
Now, according to Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projections the country is facing a minimum of $13 trillion dollar program shortfall over the next decade – and based on current trends that may be vastly understated – and that another 2 million American jobs will be lost because of Obamacare. Also, amid the glowing employment reports, hiding in plain sight, is the fact that there has been a massive shift and continuing trend to part-time work, and that 93 million working age Americans are out of the workforce, at least partly due to the Obamacare mandates.
But, let’s be honest. While this monstrosity was passed without a single Republican vote, the Republicans won two successive Congressional elections based on their opposition to this economy-killing legislation, and it turns out, they are lying just like the radical leftists.
Now, even the language of “repeal” and “reform” is being dropped from the discussion by the House and Senate, and the Los Angeles Times recently reported that Republicans are privately telling each other that the program now has millions of users and can’t be simply repealed or reformed (never mentioning that many new users were forced into the plan because they lost existing coverage due to Obamacare in the first place.). Sadly, some Republicans are actually proposing to enlarge Obamacare.
It is as though the elected officials of both parties are at war with the American people, and are intent on cementing the anti-freedom Obamacare in place, regardless of the consequences to, or the wishes of working class citizens.
The worst is yet to come. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is still ladling out regulations like spiked punch at a high school prom. Nearly 20,000 pages of regulations have already been issued by some 159 new government agencies, boards and programs, many with enforcement power.
(Photo credit: Tweeted by Sen. Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky) office. 829 pages of regulations issued in one day alone.)
This isn’t the end, it is the beginning.
The National Taxpayer’s Union has been tracking the implementation of Obamacare. In its survey NTUF reported that there are already 3,322 pages of legal guidance for Obamacare added to IRS regulations. Tyranny demands a lot of rules.
As bad as all of this is, the greatest sin of Obamacare remains the fact that it takes personal freedom and resources from the individual by fiat, and transfers it to bureaucrats, lobbyists, and crony capitalists.
Obamacare is spawning disasters like a hurricane does tornadoes. There is nothing it touches that isn’t an anti-patient bureaucratic cluster-bomb. There are hundreds of examples, but one ongoing controversy, demonstrates how intrusive and corrupt the whole mess is.
Back in the Bush Administration, the decision was made that the U.S. would upend its medical coding system and adopt the most current International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems known as ICD-10 (originally designed by the World Health Organization).
Uniform medical coding is nothing new, and is used to identify various accidents, illnesses, symptoms and social factors. This in turn is used by insurance companies and Medicare/Medicaid. The U.S. currently operates with a system that has approximately 18,000 codes. However, ICE-10 implementation stalled out for over a decade due to the tremendous cost of the conversion, and the potential for personal information being filtered to define health benefits based on behavior, economics, and lifestyle.
Obamacare resurrected the program by incorporating ICD-10 as an operating coding dragnet that will be one of the determining factors for the consumption and availability of healthcare.
HHS is nearing final implementation to accommodate the Obamacare mandates and ICD-10 will expand 18,000 codes to a staggering minimum of 144,000 codes.
In the end, this dragnet coding system will be one more tool that the government will use as it transitions to making ubiquitous health care decisions for every individual based in part on the history in these codes – it is only a matter of time.
[box type=”info” fontsize=”14″ radius=”1″]If your Obama misery index is making you see double, ask a friend in Kentucky to tell Congressman Hal Rodgers (R-KY 5th), Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, to defund ICD-10 Coding. Help stop the madness. 606-679-8346.[/box]
Multiple studies have demonstrated that the implementation of this coding system can easily reach $250,000 per private practice, and millions for hospitals when the cost of software, administration, training and conversion is complete.
In numerous survey’s up to 90% of practicing physicians expressed significant apprehension (based on their experience using ICD-9) over the proposed transition and uniformly expect that ICD-10 will have a huge negative impact on both the operation and financial stability of their practices.
So far, training in advance of the new coding has left doctors and administrators bewildered by the massive complexity of the system, many claiming that the various software applications for ICD-10 will be a cash consuming monster with no end in sight, not including the new non-medical personnel required to implement and maintain the scheme.
There simply is nothing coming out of Obamacare that is good. But, Congress, exempt from the law themselves, shows no desire to save American healthcare. Quite the contrary, they seem to relish the opportunity to force Americans into the healthcare they think we should have.
The window on stopping Obamacare seems to be closing, and the only thing that can bend its course is the intense, consistent screaming from the grassroots all across the country.
