The following was written by Daniel G. Anderson of Rehoboth Beach, DE. It is reprinted here with permission. As the five members of the Supreme Court who are not committed socialists determine the fate of Obamacare any day now, it’s especially timely.
President Obama leads Mitt Romney among women — for now. That will change if voters focus on what the Obamacare Law does to their health care.
Sally C. Pipes, President & CEO of the Pacific Research Institution has published a book entitled “The Pipes Plan, 10 Ways to Dismantle and Replace Obamacare.”
Sally says, simply put, Obamacare breaks a host of the President’s promises about issues of real concern to female voters. Among other things, it drastically limits the choices of millions of Americans, while clearly reducing the quality of their health care.
The law fundamentally shifts control of medical decisions from patients and their doctors to the Federal government. Its mandates will limit our ability to select the health insurance we want — or even keep the policies we already have.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that 20 million people will lose the coverage they now have with their employers. A former CBO Director estimates that this could reach 35 million. Many of these folks will find themselves on Medicaid, one of the worst run of all government assistance programs.
Sally Pipes says the Obamacare defenders insist that women will love a mandate that all organizations — including religious — must buy insurance that covers contraceptives. However, a recent New York Times-CBS Poll found that a majority of women believe that religious organizations should not have to cover birth control.
Perhaps these women recognize that a government powerful enough to mandate birth control coverage would someday be powerful enough to take it, or any other medical service, away.
In fact, the Obamacare Law has now set up a panel for denying coverage for procedures that the government finds to be to expensive — no matter what your doctor or medical science recommends. This is called “Outcome Research.”
This is similar to a system which has been in place for years in Great Britain, where they prohibit the use of the breast cancer drug Lapatinib, thereby denying thousands of terminally ill women treatment which might extend their lives.
The Obama Administration says that its own outcome research won’t take cost into consideration. However, with the government now paying for half of all health care consumed [in] the U.S., that promise will be hard to keep.
You may recall that recently a Health and Human Services panel recommended that women in their 40’s not receive mammograms. They said mammograms don’t save enough lives to be worth the cost, in spite of the fact breast cancer is the leading cause of death for women age 40-49.
So financial pressures will be extreme. Remember, they originally sold Obamacare on the theory that it would be less expensive and reduce the deficit by $140 billion over the next ten years. In fact a recent report by Dr. Charles Blanous, Public Trustee for Social Security and Medicare, shows that Obamacare will add up to $527 billion to our children’s/grandchildren’s debt in 12 years.
So, if keeping one’s family healthy and preserving a strong economy for future generations aren’t women’s issues, then what are?