Where do you think Obama and his family are going to get treated?

By Docs like this who will take cash for their services and are not handcuffed by the new law.

John Edwards is right. There are 2 Americas.

I hope I'll be able to find such a doctor when the time comes.

However, I think it is almost certain that one or more of the 150 additional agencies in the federal bureaucracy, created by this "law", will declare such doctors attempting to operate outside the system "illegal" and prohibit them practicing as such. It is also almost certain that the courts will uphold such a determination, no doubt citing "interstate commerce" or some such dreck.

One of the foundations of ObamaCare is the compulsory nature of it (except for religious conscientious objectors like Muslims, that is). Independence cannot and will not be tolerated. We do not know what is good for us. Only the socialists know.

cpabroker, you took the words right out of my mouth.
In addition to the multiple other reasons why Obamacare is just wrong, HIPAA will no longer mean anything either. I am actually afraid to go to my bi annual checkup this summer. I know it isn't going to happen that quickly, but it still frightens me to know that what my Doctor and I discuss will not stay between my doctor and I. This did give me the idea to ask my doctor about what he thinks of all this. I might ask him at my next aptt that I luckily made in December after my yearly physical.

This makes the argument for White Glove Home Healthcare and the like much stronger. You pay a monthly membership fee, and a small service call, for a home visit by a NP. No insurance. Not good for the big stuff, but for most things, that might be the way to go.

I have never given a dime to any candidate for office before this, but I'm donating to the "repeal" team.

Good luck on support of a repeal effort. However, the smart money bets that this stuff will never be repealed. History says that Republicans have never come close to repealing any big government expansion program; in fact, Repub administrations and Congresses have been complicit in the passage of many of them.

If they are actually able to counter all historical indications, at the earliest, repeal would be Jan. 2013, if a Repub is president. Even then, Repubs would need 60 reliable votes for repeal in the Senate.

I'm betting it'll never happen legislatively. The only way, in the end, to counter this government takeover of our lives will be for too many of us to ignore, to resist the new system, and for many in the productive sector to make personal decisions that will serve to starve the system. In other words, throw off tyranny the same way Americans always have -- through personal and collective action on the ground. Whether this is done will determine whether we remain America, or just slide into a permanent socialist basket case.

"Either I can serve you as my patient or I can serve the government."

Oh give me a break. Most industries, especially professionals, have some form of regulatory oversight and still manage to serve their customers. If you can't handle both, maybe you shouldn't be in a professional occupation.

"you have involved me in these regulations and put me in the jurisdiction of government for my activities, decisions and behavior"

You previously existed outside the jurisdiction of the government? How fascinating.

Have to wonder how she dealt with customers who had health insurance in the past. Insurers typically have conditions on coverage. Why was she prepared to deal with private rules but not government regulation?

Sounds like sour grapes to me but I'll be the first to admit I don't understand the furore over this at all.

Scott, if you don't understand it - how can you come to your determination that it is sour grapes? Could you, yourself, possibly be missing the bigger picture in all this?

Also, she's a doctor - I am guessing you are not.

I'm not a doctor but I understand a fair bit about government regulation. Does one have to be a doctor to have a legitimate perspective? Are the other posters above all doctors? Or is that only necessary in order to disagree? My point is simply that her complaints ring a bit hollow to me in light of the status quo ante, which she appears to have no issue with.

But I suspect you are not taking issue with my specific post so much as with the fact that I'm not terribly worked up about the health insurance bill.

An Obamacare "Specialist" will consult with your Doctor to prescribe the proper treatment under Federal Guidelines, ya know, to rein in unnecessary costs, weed out waste, and prevent fraud. Other than that, everything will stay the same, so they say.

Still learning the ins/outs of this healthcare bill (as are the folks who voted on it I imagine). I understand the desire of Dr. Johnstone to avoid having a third party interfere with patient treatment. Noble goal, but third parties are nothing new. Typically patients (me included) and doctors have both wanted to have no intervention, then send the bill to the insurance company. Don’t ask any questions, just shut up and write the checks. I am reminded of a great line from Fraser when Fraser tells his brother Niles, who has allegedly been assaulted by a bully, that he will see to it that Niles gets the best medical treatment that the man’s money can buy.

Where then, is incentive to control costs? Who wants to see the brutal math over whether a treatment is effective and thus worth paying for? Insurance companies have tried to manage care. Their tactics and methods of doing so can and should be open to scrutiny, but they are businesses that ultimately must make a profit. If the new legislation prevents profitability, then they exit the business. Who is left? Uncle Sam, the ultimate non-profit organization. That is scarier than insurance companies because you can’t exactly take your business elsewhere.

Where is the solution? Frankly, I don’t know that there is one. Any solution will gore someone’s ox, but the farther we get from a free market, the worse it will be. Free markets fund medical innovation and efficiencies. Patients paying for their own care would be the ideal in free markets. Even so, how many can afford to leave the third party out of the picture? I could pay for a physical, but I certainly can’t fund a liver transplant. Some can, but many can’t even afford the physical. Heck, the average patient has no clue what their treatment really costs – only what they themselves have to pay. I wish Dr. Johnstone luck in finding enough patients with personal resources to fund their own care. Lots of sticker shock ahead.

I will be voting and/or supporting any politician that will defund this leviathan from here on out. Republican, Democrat, Green Party - don't care.

With no funding, it cannot be put into place. Obama's veto powers for reappeal efforts will not come into play.

http://www.defundanddisobey.com/defundpledge/politicians-defund-pledge/

For crying out loud, I just saw yet ANOTHER headline talking about ANOTHER bailout - now we are trying AGAIN with the same goofballs who defaulted at more than a 50% rate through the HAMP program. Giveaways for everyone! When did the American Dream become the American Entitlement?

Every now and then we get some starry-eyed halfwit wandering through here who thinks all this government growth and takeover is "Progress." They just don't understand the "furore" (?) over it all. They don't seem to understand that the government doesn't actually produce anything or earn money on its own - it can only take what the private class sends its way and redistribute it. (When did we stop teaching economics and accounting?)

We tolerate some of this because in certain situations a collective solution is the best way to do things. Like how myself and everyone else who lives in my condo complex can save money by pooling our funds and hiring one company to do our snow removal and lawn care for all of us.

But the federal government takes more money out of my pay than my state income taxes, insurance premiums, local property taxes, and condo association dues combined. And almost NONE of the ways it spends money are ways that *I* want it to spend money. People should take care of their own retirement, their own medical care, their own savings and financial management, their own kids, their own house payments, their own groceries, and decide for themselves how important a fake tan is to them. It's like suddenly everyone woke up and decided they shouldn't have to take care of themselves!

This has been going on for decades - I have known since I was a teenager (I am now 40) that Social Security was in trouble. The old bluehairs and their voting majority were always the reason it could never be fixed. But they can't all be selfish, greedy assholes. This is simply not true of the majority of old bluehairs I know. Why has this never been fixed? And then we just keep making it worse?

If I hear about one more government "jobs creation" program I will simply explode. We are a half-starved rabbit, desperate for food, wandering through a frozen wasteland, but hey - our fleas are hiring! Where is this damn money supposed to come from? Wealth has to be CREATED at some point. You can't just shuffle it around!

This situation is of our own making. Yet I am not in favor of it, and nobody I know is in favor of it, so why does this shit keep happening? With this whole healthcare thing, there was nothing I could do. I didn't get to vote on it personally, and MY representative voted against it, but even though nobody I know wanted it to happen, some of their representatives voted for it anyway. But we have to wait until November to get these bums out of office, and two more years before we can get rid of Obama.

I'm just ... mindblown by this. On one hand I want to say, 'How did we get fucked so quickly?' yet on the other hand, we DIDN'T! This took a long time! As a nation, we can't complain about driving off the road when we've been asleep behind the wheel for so long. But wake up for godssake!

The face of the American Tea Party Movement:
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201003260027

"Still learning the ins/outs of this healthcare bill (as are the folks who voted on it I imagine)."

I'm sure the ones who voted for it have moved on, their mission having been accomplished. If they don't read these things before they vote on them, they certainly won't after.

fu·ror   [fyoor-awr, -er]
–noun
1.
a general outburst of enthusiasm, excitement, controversy, or the like.
2.
a prevailing fad, mania, or craze.
3.
fury; rage; madness.

More Tea Party asshattery:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_03/023064.php

Yes, yes, I just thought "furore" was a wacky British spelling or something. (No offense, Jody!) I think people who like big government must either a) not pay taxes, so they like this stuff because they are net recipients who don't have to help pay for it, or b) they do pay taxes and for whatever reason just love forking over their money on behalf of people who make bad decisions. Maybe they think the vast majority of people in the US couldn't take care of themselves even if they actually had to. Who knows?

Here's a question - why couldn't ANY of these government programs be run at the state level? If you let SSI work that way, for example. Some states would have it, others wouldn't, and NO ONE would live in a state that forced you to pay into a ponzi scheme. So those states that DID have it might actually have a solvent program that worked. People like me who want nothing to do with it could live in those states that don't have it. We'd all get what we want, and with fifty states all trying different things, we'd have a lot of options to choose from.

Actually, I can argue with that. We're supposed to be protesting taxation without representation by... mailing our elected representatives directly? That sounds, by definition, that we are getting taxation WITH representation.

The majority of the country wants health care reform, and they let that be known in the 2008 election. Just because the opposition party is now in power doesn't mean you don't have representation. It just means the people with the majority of power may not represent your views some of the time. That happens in a democracy. If you don't like it, move to Costa Rica with Rush.

@franko -

The majority of the country DID NOT WANT HEALTH CARE REFORM AS SOLD TO IT BY THE FASCISTS IN THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION.

Yes, I said fascist. It is textbook fascism -- the illusion of private enterprise completely run by the central government.

And it is not taxation with representation - because there is nobody who actually represents the taxed. The untaxed get the bulk of the representation, and they use it to soak us even harder.

Not me. Not anymore. I'm stepping back, working less, enjoying my time on this ball of sod called Earth. I'm choosing cheaper hobbies, and helping in my own little way to drive the government to insolvency.