Hundreds of millions of dollars were shoveled into federal enforcement programs, which often seem to be entrapment programs. There’s a giant new cottage “compliance” industry adding to the costs and hassles of Medicare.
[Note: This article was originally posted on December 16th, 2011. The IFNM website was attacked by hackers and many articles are now gone from the archives. As a public service, IFNM is now reposting said articles.]
Dr. Jane Orient has been warning us for over two decades about the bipartisan push toward a nationalized healthcare system. The Tucson physician has been in private practice since 1981 and executive president of Association of American Physicians and Surgeons since 1989. She has written several books including Your Doctor Is Not In: healthy skepticism about national health care in 1994.
Orient dates our present trite meme “ObamaCare” back to the Clinton era when Republicans, led by Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, “turned around and implemented on their own some of the very worst features of the Clinton plan.” In a candid op ed, she writes:
Newt Gingrich and other Republicans promise to repeal ObamaCare, but doctors remember what they did in 1996. Just after they “defeated” ClintonCare, they changed its name and enacted the very worst parts of it.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) started out as a short act to improve “COBRA” coverage that allows workers to extend employer-sponsored insurance for a time after changing jobs. But about 300 pages mysteriously appeared, grafted onto this supposedly insignificant bill.
Republicans evidently don’t read the bills either. They appeared to be shocked when I called this addendum to their attention, and its remarkable similarity to parts of the Clinton plan. In fact, parts were practically a verbatim “cut and paste.”
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