Sunday, October 27, 2013

Primum Non Nocere ("First, Do No Harm")

A little-noted irony of Obamacare's promise to "cover the un-insured" (originally targeted at 30+ million, but now unlikely to reach 10 million) is that it is a defacto violation of medical ethics, which is to first do no harm.

The original Hippocratic Oath was highly religious.
If it is true that 30 million Americans do not have health insurance, that's only 10% of the population. Why force the other 90% into more expensive, less desirable care, if all you really want to do is help the 10%?

And it's not even ten percent. We all know that many of "the un-insured" are young and healthy. Plus many choose to pay cash for medical expenses.  And yet more (me included) choose a wellness lifestyle that most insurance plans won't cover. In reality, Obamacare disrupts the lives of 95% of Americans in a supposed bid to help 5% of us. It would be soooo much less trouble to just GIVE the 5% free insurance. But wait: we already give free insurance to the poor (Medicaid) and the elderly (Medicare). Hmm.

So now in the land of the free, those of us who are not powerful corporate friends of Obama's are being forced under penalty of law to purchase insurance we may not want or need from private companies offering government-approved plans. And in just the first few weeks of Obamacare enrollment, already a million Americans who did have insurance have received letters telling them their coverage has been canceled. And, of course, the website where they are supposed to go purchase their new plan is broken (good thing it only cost $678 million to build that site). And the government isn't telling us how many people have signed up, or how much the unsubsidized cost will be compared to what folks had been paying before Obamacare.

This is not to mention the left-leaning Consumer Reports magazine warning Americans to stay away from Healthcare.gov because of scams and security vulnerabilities. And business leaders have pointed out for the last couple of years now that job-growth is being stalled by the threat of Obamacare looming over the economy.

All this harm, and Obamacare hasn't even started yet.