In its reaction to Thursday’s Supreme Court decision upholding Obamacare’s subsidies, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) said the ruling “keeps Obamacare on life support at taxpayer expense.”
“Obamacare itself destroys true insurance and places additional crushing burdens on those who provide actual care,” said Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of AAPS, in a press release. “This can’t be fixed by forcing taxpayers to pay a chunk of some people’s unaffordable premiums. What the Court has done is to further undermine the rule of law.”
The organization noted that, in its decision, the Court’s majority held that the “tax credits” and individual mandate were both needed to prevent Obamacare from experiencing a “death spiral.”
“Therefore, it reasoned, Congress must have intended them to apply even in the 34 States that declined to establish an Exchange,” the press statement continued.
“Statements by ‘disappearing’ MIT economist Jonathan Gruber that Congress deliberately intended to withhold subsidies as an ‘incentive’ for States to establish Exchanges were evidently disregarded,” stated Orient.
AAPS General Counsel Andrew Schlafly observed, “If the Court had applied the plain meaning of the statute, then the 34 states that declined to establish exchanges would be free to develop their own approaches without the interference by Obamacare. Instead, the Court distorted the statute to rescue an unsuccessful law.”
Dr. Richard Amerling, associate professor of clinical medicine at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City, and president of AAPS, tells Breitbart News he anticipated the Court’s decision back in March in his column at Newsmax, and that the upshot of the decision is that nothing is changed.
“Obamacare is still a disaster, a costly scam that funnels billions of taxpayer dollars directly to the insurance industry, and that accelerates the bureaucratization of medicine,” he said. “And while we were focused on Obamacare, the Republican Congress passed MACRA [Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015], which cements into place the centralized control of medical practice through ACOs [Accountable Care Organizations], bundling, and other forms of ‘pay-for-performance.’”
With the Supreme Court’s additional blow dealt to physicians in private practice who do not wish to be part of the medical bureaucracy, Amerling states he and his organization are down to their “last line of defense.”
“We are encouraging more and more physicians to opt out of Medicare, Medicaid and Obamacare – which are all starting to look the same,” he explained. “We must preserve a crop of independent, private physicians who will safeguard the Hippocratic practice of medicine. And we must do this while we still can.”
Dr. Gerard Gianoli, a specialist in Neuro-otology and Skull Base Surgery at The Ear and Balance Institute in Covington, Louisiana, tells Breitbart News the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was supposed to remedy the problems of cost and access regarding healthcare.
“Unfortunately, not only has the ACA not fixed these problems, but it has actually made them worse,” he said. “The Supreme Court’s ruling today further entrenches the third party payment system that mainly benefits the health insurance companies. With all medical care running through insurance, this will continue to increase costs — as noted by requests for 25-50 percent premium increases by the private insurance companies.”
Gianoli continues:
Access to healthcare is actually reduced by two mechanisms — narrowed networks and higher deductibles — both made worse by the ACA. The only solution to this is a president and Congress that will repeal the ACA and restore a true free market to medical care as we have seen in Refractive Eye Surgery, Cosmetic Surgery and Third Party Free Medical Practices. All three of these have reduced cost while increasing quality, unlike the current system.
“It is amazing to me that so many Americans feel that free markets are the best way to minimize cost and maximize quality in every industry, except for health care,” he added. “This is belied by the above examples.”
Further information about self-pay medical practices can be found at Sean Parnell’s website, aptly called The Self-Pay Patient.
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