By Mary Fauldsstaff writer
July 2010 – March 23, 2010. In a large ceremony in the East Room of the White House, President Barack Obama signed into law a huge, sweeping reform of the nation’s health care system, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Prior to the signing, Vice President Joe Biden called the moment a “big (expletive) deal.” Coarseness aside, he’s right. However, is it a big good deal, or a big bad deal for the country?
Liberty Counsel determined from reading the bill that it was not what this country needed. So when the legislation was signed into law, Liberty immediately filed suit against the government, claiming the law was unconstitutional. Mary McAlister, senior legal counsel with Liberty, helped draft that complaint.
“We filed our lawsuit in the western district of Virginia, here in Lynchburg,” McAlister said. “We are seeking a declaratory judgment from the court, which is asking the court to basically declare that various portions of the health care bill, and really the whole thing, are unconstitutional on various levels.”
McAlister said the most egregious violation from the bill requires people to purchase something from a private company in the form of insurance, and the bill has several other provisions that infringe upon people’s individual rights as guaranteed by the Constitution.
Pro-life supporters will find themselves paying for abortion coverage as well. “Even though Congress has indicated that abortion isn’t covered here,” said McAlister, “it really is, and they’ve just used a lot of smoke and mirrors to try to show that it isn’t. They’ve set up different things about making separate payments to cover abortion, putting those who support it in a separate bank account.” However, she said safeguards are not sufficient to exempt people from subsidizing abortions.
“There are limited exemptions from having to get insurance,” said McAlister. “One of those is a partial religious exemption, which is a problem because it doesn’t cover all religious beliefs. Say a group like Liberty University, who are Christians, might want to opt out, but they can’t.
“The only ones who can opt out from prescribed coverage are members of certain religious sects, like the Amish and Christian Scientists. Individuals do not have that choice. It is an equal protection problem under the Constitution.”
People who are in Christian health care sharing groups such as Medi-Share and Samaritan Ministries will be able to continue to be part of those groups, but there would be problems for anyone who wanted to start a new one.
“Those groups are exempted, but they had to have been in existence since 1999,” she said. “So say, for example, [if] the Southern Baptist Convention wanted to start its own health care sharing ministries in order to provide medical care for its members, they can’t do that.”
Dr. Andre Van Mol is a family practitioner in California, as well as a member of the Christian Medical and Dental Associations. He has written several articles about health care reform and its impact on patients as well as doctors. He currently has an article about the recently passed legislation and its impact on doctors under peer review for an academic medical journal.
Van Mol believes that the health care legislation will ultimately be detrimental to the health care system in the U. S. “Everyone wanted health care reform,” he said, “doctors in particular. The problem is this isn’t what we asked for. We’re now in a position that we’re going to painfully find out the difference between wanting and having.”
He said the government climate is going to change to be increasingly oversight oriented, as opposed to individual care oriented. The focus will be cost effectiveness, and he is concerned that it will become more of a priority than safety and efficacy. He said he also worries that physicians will be graded on how much they cost, rather than how well they care for patients.
The new wave of health care changes could also destroy a significant part of our economy. “Functionally, what it is going to do,” said Van Mol, “is take what is 17% of our massive economy and convert it into an entitlement program. It’s easy and in vogue to criticize how much more the U.S. spends in health care costs than anybody else, but that doesn’t mean anything.
“Again, that 17% is part of our economy, meaning employment generator, and innovation generator. It was something vibrant and active. If you convert that to a government entitlement program, the only inertia it will have is for cost constraints.”
The new legislation also calls for taxes on pharmaceutical firms and medical equipment firms. Van Mol said these higher taxes will result in less research and development because of less available money. “That means fewer breakthroughs from the nation that has led the world in breakthroughs,” he said.
Another major problem with the health care legislation for those in the medical field is the bill’s lack of protection for a provider’s right of conscience. Right of conscience allows all health care workers to refuse to participate in objectionable procedures, such as abortion or birth control, usually for religious reasons.
“That is specifically protected by the First Amendment and three federal laws over the past 35 years,” said Van Mol. “Those would include Hyde-Weldman, the Church amendment and the Public Health Service Act. This new bill’s shaky commitment to conscience rights, based on its lack of mention, isn’t going to do anything to reassure pro-life doctors.”
This could mean an exodus of doctors from practice. An Investors Business Daily-Tipp survey found that 45% of doctors were considering quitting if the health care bill passed. A survey from the Medicus firm, quoted in the New England Journal of Medicine, reported 29% of doctors were pledging to quit if the health care bill passed, and 45% of doctors would quit if the bill included a public health care insurance option. In that same survey, 46% of primary care doctors said either they wanted to leave their practice or felt that they would be forced out of practice by the impending changes from the bill.
Van Mol also said what is bad for the doctor is bad for the patient. If this legislation gets fully enacted, if it is not repealed, it will prove irreversible. “No industrialized nation has ever been able to extricate itself from single-payer medicine, and the reason for that is pretty straightforward. The private sector options and the facilitating companies and organizations that make it [a private-owned system] possible dry up and go away.”
Employers of a certain size will be mandated by the bill to provide health care insurance for their employees. If they do not, they will be fined.
“What employers will find,” he said, “is that the fines are considerably less expensive than health insurance that now costs more than it would have otherwise. That will cause a dumping of people off of insurance onto the government plan, which at this point in time does not exist, but we know it is coming.”
McAlister said there is another cost problem with mandating companies to provide health insurance. “Many of the mandates apply to companies of 50 employees or more, so if a company is thinking of expanding, maybe they have 45 employees. They might think twice about going to 50 because then they would suddenly have all these additional health care costs. This bill could perhaps stymie economic growth, either from existing or new companies.”
Beyond businesses, individuals will see more money flying out of their pockets. If an individual, for any reason, decides not to have health insurance, he will be fined. If he has a family, his family will be fined per individual.
Van Mol said we know the new taxes the bill calls for are substantial – $600 billion – and there will be $500 billion in Medicare cuts over the next 10 years.
Not only is government health care going to cost citizens money, it will also cost them time. One just has to look to other countries with socialized medicine to see what is coming down the pike for the U.S. The Canadian government pays over $1 billion to have its citizens treated in the U.S. just to cut down on their waiting list, according to Van Mol. Ex:
Wait times in Canada
Gynecological surgery: 1 to 3 months
Cataract removal: 12 to 18 weeks
Tonsillectomy: 1 to 7 months
Neurosurgery: 5 to 30 weeks
Fraser Institute, 2009 report Paying More, Getting Less: Measuring the Sustainability of Government Health Spending in Canada
A Vancouver think tank called the Frasier Institute said the American health care system is Canada’s “safety valve.” The $1 billion Canada spends in the U.S. also does not count the medical tourists from Canada who come to the U.S. on their own to get treatment.
“In my estimation, yes, our country has made a mistake in passing this legislation. In fact, I think it is a train wreck,” said Van Mol. “Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi made very clear where she thought this was headed, and I quote, ‘We won that fight, and once we kick through this door, there’ll be more legislation to follow.’”
He said the proper interpretation of Pelosi’s statement is that the health care legislation was simply a “starter home,” a place to begin legislating people’s lives and activities.
“The problem of it is,” said McAlister, “if Congress can have the power to require you to purchase health insurance from a private company, then it’s virtually limitless what they can require you to do. Any aspect of your life can suddenly be ordered [by government].” 
