ObamaCare Vs. The Hippocratic Oath

Twenty-nine years ago I stood with my 150 classmates in Thorn Hall, at Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago, as Dean James Eckenhoff asked us to raise our right hands and repeat after him:

I will apply measures for the benefit of the sick according to my ability and judgment; I will keep them from harm and injustice.

I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody if asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. In purity and holiness I will guard my life and my art.

I will not use the knife, not even on sufferers from stone, but will withdraw in favor of such men as are engaged in this work.

Whatever houses I may visit, I will come for the benefit of the sick, remaining free of all intentional injustice.

Those words, from The Hippocratic Oath written in 400 B.C., changed my life and the lives of the thousands of patients my classmates and I have touched over the past twenty-nine years.

Through my career, I have tried to add to that Oath my obligation “To PREVENT Harm”, through my work in Prevention and at The Institute For Preventative Sports Medicine. I keep this Oath as my foundation as I review the current proposals for Health Care Reform. Take all of the politics out of the latest versions authored by The Obama-Pelosi-Reid Administration, and it comes down to The Oath.

The sad fact is that the Obama-Pelosi-Reid Administration’s 1990 page health care reform bill (HR3962) and supplement(HR3961) violate The Oath by stripping freedom from every person, family and business in Our country . This 19 pound pair of documents, entitled “Affordable Health Care For Americans Act,” will cost taxpayers over $1.2 Trillion, will institute 13 tax increases totaling $740 Billion, will increase Medicare Premiums to Seniors by $70 Billion, will cost shift $34 Billion to State budgets, and will cut Medicare benefits to Seniors by $426 Billion over ten years.

This current version of a Federal Government takeover of the health care delivery system is a carbon copy of what Obama, Pelosi and Reid tried to “jam” through Congress in July, with a couple of “new” additions to strip every American of even more Freedoms. As Yogi Berra once said, “It’s deja vu all over again.”

This version gives the rationing board, already established through The Stimulus Bill (The Federal Coordinating Council For Comparative Effectiveness Research), additional funding to establish a “Center” to institute the rationing of care. Rationing is the heart and soul of this legislation. Rationing, as a method of “cost cutting,” is the most inhumane and unethical means of health care cost containment. By definition, these bureaucrats will overrule licensed doctors, and preside over the denial of health care.

This Bill also creates a government regulated insurance “Exchange,” which will include a government subsidized and run insurance company, funded by The Treasury Department for start up costs of $2 Billion of tax payer money. This “Exchange” will be overseen by a Federal bureaucrat given the title: “The Health Choices Commissioner.” The “Commissioner” will establish benefit standards for ALL members of the “Exchange,” not just the government-run company. In other words, this Government CEO-equivalent will set the rules for all private companies who are “in competition” with the Federal Government. How fair is that? Sorry, I should have realized. This is NOT about fair. It is about CONTROL. Too much government control is a recipe for disaster.

The most glaring difference between the Obama-Pelosi-Reid health care bill from July and this “new” version is the elimination of a very important sentence from the previous bill. The July Bill (HR 3200) provided for The Health Benefits Advisory Committee whose role is to make recommendations on minimum benefit standards and cost sharing standards. The July Bill charged this Committee with the mandate to “ensure that essential benefits coverage does NOT lead to rationing of health care.” The current Bill establishes the same Committee but ELIMINATES the prohibition on rationing care.

It is obvious. The “New” Obama-Pelosi-Reid Health Care Bill’s heart and soul is based on (1) rationing and denying care to cut costs, and (2) taxing every American in its path. The end result strips Freedom from every citizen. Then again, what would you expect from a document that uses the words “require” 118 times, “tax” 87 times, and “penalty” 113 times.

The Oath my classmates and I took 29 years ago was based on the premise “Do No Harm.” I cannot condone this legislation, which promises to HARM every person, family and business in our country. We need to reject rationing, and fight the loss of control of our health care lives.