I have visited 70 countries all over the world. There is no healthcare system that provides the excellence that the USA system does. Much of what you read in the press is not true.(2) Virtually everyone in the USA can obtain healthcare; for those who are “involuntarily uninsured” the number is near 4% not the 47% that everyone quotes.(2,11) I would fully support some system to provide care for the involuntarily uninsured in any system or country.

Acquiescence is the trademark of the slave.
Aristotle (4th Century B.C.)

As you may or may not know, there are no physicians from organized medicine serving on Mrs. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Health Care Task Force—MDs who represent practitioners and their patients. Those MDs who are on the task force, according to the American Medical Association (AMA), are mostly “federal employees” who do not represent the profession. It is reasonable to assume that more likely they represent the bureaucracies whence they came and which sign their paychecks.

I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work.
I want to achieve immortality through not dying.

Woody Allen

Unless the people, through unified action, arise and take charge of their Government, they will find that their Government has taken charge of them. Independence and liberty will be gone and the general public will find itself in a condition of servitude to an aggregation of organized and selfish ambitions.

Calvin Coolidge (30th President of the U.S. [1923-1929]) and
Alfred E. Smith (Joint Statement issued October 12, 1932)

A half-truth is a whole lie.
Jewish Proverb

Anything repeated three times in Washington becomes fact.
Eugene McCarthy

All the information that has come to light regarding the deliberations, inappropriate and shocking revelations, of the secret Health Care Task Force of President Bill and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton thanks to the lawsuit, AAPS v.

But what events have led us to this deplorable state of affairs with American medicine headed inexorably in the wrong direction—down the path of welfarism, collectivism, and corporatism? To answer this loaded and troublesome question, perhaps one should ponder the words of the politician par excellence, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who once admitted, “Nothing just happens in politics. If something happens, you can be sure it was planned that way.”  So, in our search for answers, let us glean and ponder the changes ushered in the 1960s by the Great Society of President Lyndon B.

Since the time of Hippocrates (460-370 B.C.), the Father of Medicine, physicians have traditionally subscribed to doing no harm and prescribed what is in the best interest of their individual patients; in other words, putting their patients first. This concept is known as individual-based ethics.

The new bioethics movement, on the other hand, subscribes to population-based ethics, in which physicians become obligated to make decisions for their patients in concert with what is in the best interest of society or the state.

The upholding of Obamacare by the Supreme Court in an unexpected 5-4 political decision is a travesty of American constitutionality. It is a sad day in the country when a knowledgeable chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court betrays the country and places himself and his legacy -- not to mention the chants for “change” and “progress,” and his obvious desire for a favorable, epochal association with the first African-American president -- ahead of the moral and economic well-being of the nation.

The upholding of ObamaCare by the Supreme Court in an unexpected 5-4 political decision is a travesty of American constitutionality. It is a sad day in the country when a knowledgeable Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court betrays the country and places himself and his legacy — not to mention the chants for "change" and "progress," and his obvious desire for a favorable, epochal association with the first African-American president — ahead of the moral and economic well being of the nation.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (2010), more commonly referred to as ObamaCare, has become one of the most controversial pieces of legislation passed by the Democrat-controlled, 111th U.S. Congress during President Obama’s administration.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (2010), more commonly referred to as ObamaCare, has become one of the most controversial pieces of legislation passed by the Democrat-controlled, 111th U.S. Congress during President Obama’s administration.

In Part I of this article, I discussed a concept that is always on the mind of the socialist planner and that is "social utility." To fully understand this concept one has to understand the socialist philosophy, if it can indeed be called a philosophy — in general, philosophies are analytical.

One characteristic of the collectivists is that when a particular term becomes unpopular, such as the word socialism, they create a succession of more socially friendly terms. For example, in the 1800s they did not shy away from the term socialism, but as people began to understand that socialism was a form of social control and engineering, they dropped the term for more acceptable terms such as liberalism, progressivism and collectivism. The socialist promoting a government-run health care system did likewise.

In a recent letter to the editor published in my local newspaper, the Macon Telegraph (9/16/11), Jack Bernard, a self-described "Republican,” retired health care executive, was "disconcerted by the ideological free market rigidity” that he observed during a debate by the Republican presidential candidates concerning “the health care reform question.”

In a recent column, Jack Bernard, a self-described “Republican” retired health care executive, was “disconcerted by the ideological free market rigidity” of Republican presidential candidates as it regards health care.

The retired “Republican” executive, among other things, decried Rep. Michele Bachmann’s alleged tarring of ObamaCare as a “socialized medicine plot.” His solution is simply “to copy the health care of other developed (socialized) nations” and use more “regulatory authority to cover everyone and hold down costs.”

The winter of 1996 generated “interesting times” for the Arizona Chapter of the AAPS. After our legislative success in establishing an HMO Disclosure bill last year, we attempted to expand on past accomplishments by seeking passage of a Patient Protection Act. Our bid was summarily killed by a legislator who the Arizona Medical Association (ArMA) had supported.

The California Chapter of the AAPS (CAAPS) has been in existence for about 18 months now. The Golden State has been a battleground in which our chapter has been in a continual struggle against managed care (reportedly controlling 85% of the health care market), on the one side; and an influential bunch of single-payer advocates on the other side. (Three million Californians voted for a single-payer system in the 1994 ballot initiative.) Some of these battles were reported last year at the AAPS Annual Meeting in Falls Church, Virginia.

With the goal of stopping the use of capitation as a method of paying health care providers in his state, Salem Oregon ophthalmologist, Dr. Gordon Miller, has circulated a citizen initiative petition banning the practice, and claims to have enough signatures to place the issue before the Oregon voters in November 1996.

Your Doctor Is Not In was written by an internist in solo private practice who is also executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. Dr. Jane M. Orient is a gifted writer and a prominent figure in the health care reform discussion, who here addresses many of the problems with our health care system and offers solutions.

Americans enjoy the best medical care in the history of the world, but our system is being destroyed by government regulation, by the socialist principles embodied in the Medicare and Medicaid systems, and by the liberal social policies our society has followed over the last half century: that is the theme of Code Blue: Health Care In Crisis, by Dr. Edward R. Annis, past president of both the American Medical Association (AMA) and the World Medical Association, and one of America’s most distinguished physicians.

In the past 20 years, the economics of our health care delivery system has evolved from overutilization to underutilization. In the 1970s, providers (physicians and hospitals) were rewarded for providing too much medical care. Because of unrestricted first dollar coverage of that era’s health insurance plans both patient and provider were encouraged to overutilize procedures, tests, and pharmaceuticals.

Rejoice and be glad, Americans!

Owing entirely to the visionary compassion of the Dear Leader and his party, the same regime that has slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans, that poured trillions of dollars into the coffers of Wall Street kleptocrats, that brought its unique healing touch to victims of the post-Katrina disaster in New Orleans, and that routinely commits similar acts of divine charity, will now relieve you of the burden of making your own health care decisions.

A Physician's Diagnosis

Here is an unusual book; half is a history of Western civilization and half a powerful exhortation against government control of the delivery of health care. Far from being disconnected, these two subjects are thoughtfully woven together by Dr. Miguel Faria, eminent neurosurgeon at Mercer University School of Medicine in Macon, Georgia.

How is one to describe a book in which chapter I begins with the words "In the beginning" and that then proceeds to discuss, in 32 chapters, the history of humanity and the development of medicine and medical ethics - up to, and including, the ill-fated Clinton health plan? The book has been written by a practicing neurosurgeon with wide-ranging interests. Its sweep through history is demonstrated by the 30 photographic plates of such mythological and historical figures as Osiris, Hippocrates, and Vesalius.

According to an old Cuban proverb, "Camarón que se duerme, se lo lleva la corriente" (shrimp that sleep are swept away by the current). Some physicians may find Dr. Faria's wake-up call as welcome as a blast of Arctic wind. In his view, the current policy of most medical organizations --- "nonconfrontation and cooperation" --- could make them, in effect, accomplices of the barbarians.

To all concerned Americans,

I do not believe there is a physician today who is optimistic about the apparent future of medical practice. Anyone who is in practice is witnessing the gradual erosion of the physician’s freedom to deliver ethical medicine based on the Hippocratic tradition.

A popular New Hampshire radio host recently mentioned a historical fact about which I was unaware. During the Vietnam War, he said, the Viet Cong forces occasionally employed a most deplorable tactic. When moving troops or supplies, they would line women and children around the convoys. If the South Vietnamese and American forces wanted to inflict any damage on the convoys, they first had to shoot through the buffer of innocent humanity in their way. They would be killing women and children.