The following are the speaking notes Dr. Larry G. Goss forwarded the Sooner Tea Party for his remarks at the August 22nd Health Care Freedom Rally:
National Health Care or the Nightmare of Unhealthy Care
by Dr. Larry G. Goss, M.D. and Sooner Tea Party member
· Why are we here today?
· Why am I here today?
· It was many years ago during the Viet Nam war when as a scared 2nd Lt I raised my right hand and swore a sacred oath to …”preserve, protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies, both foreign and domestic!”
· When I left the Army, I was not told to raise my left hand and undo that oath.
· Today, 41 years later, it is still as valid and honorable as that long ago fall day in 1968.
· Today there are many enemies to our Constitution, and unfortunately, many of them are domestic.
· And that is why I am here today, to do my duty with honor and courage for my country and for my fellow Americans.
· That is why we are all here today.
· It was George Washington who said “Government is not reason. It is not eloquence. It is force. Like fire a dangerous servant and a fearsome master.”
· We must contain this “dangerous servant” or it will become our “Fearsome Master!”
· I am here to talk about National Health Care or more correctly the Nightmare of Unhealthy Care.
· That this legislation is blatantly unconstitutional is obvious. There is nothing in Article I Sec. 8 of the U.S. Constitution that gives the federal government any authority to impose a National Health Care Plan (Socialized medicine!) on Americans!
COSTS OF MEDICAL CARE HISTORICAL AND
PROJECTED
· Most of the current cost of medical care has been driven by government i.e., Medicare mandated bureaucratic regulations that Medicaid and private insurers also adopt.
· It has been estimated that these burdensome requirements account for at least 75% of every health care dollar today.
· 40 years ago in Oklahoma, an office call was $3.00, and a busy physician could have a large practice with just one full time nurse, and perhaps a part-time receptionist/bookkeeper. Now a physician is hard pressed to run his office with at least 4-6 full time employees and several more part-time employees/consultants! These employees have little to do with direct patient care and all of these people have salaries and benefits that must be paid.
· As just one example of current mandated costs imposed on physicians and other health care providers, ask any practicing physician about the costs of “Prior Authorizations” requirements in their offices today. Then multiply this cost by the hundreds of thousands of physicians practicing in the United States today!
· I would estimate these wasteful costs to be $5 to $10 million dollars DAILY for each 100,000 doctors today!
· That the proposed Obama Health Care Plan (Socialized Medicine) is an improvement is ludicrous, and flagrantly dishonest. This absurd legislation is going to increase the bureaucratic costs even more astronomically! (Please see Organizational Chart of the House Democrat’s Health Plan at http://www.orlytaitzesq.com/images/DemocratHealthCarePlan,.jpg)
· NOW TO LOOK AT PROJECTED COSTS UNDER THE PROPOSED OBAMACARE.
· HR 3200 mandates a new 8% payroll tax on employers with 10 or more employees.
· This new tax would, in effect, force lower income employees to take an 8% pay reduction: $1,600 yearly for a $10/hour employee.
· HR 3200 attempts to fund this draconian program by fining any individual (i.e. small businesses) with before deductions income of $280,000.
· Political appointees would make “Comparative Effectiveness” determinations to deny medical care recommended by a patient’s physician. These bureaucrats would be paid based on these denials. The more denials, the more they are paid!
· It is planned to reduce physician payments by 21% in 2010 in order to save $240 billion from the government’s already astronomical budget deficit.
· This will have an extremely detrimental effect on access to medical care in rural and inner city areas, and on small struggling physician’s offices.
· HR 3200 also does nothing to address another of the most significant engines driving health care costs: tort reform to control frivolous lawsuits. Malpractice insurance costs are another considerable factor driving up the costs of medical care for all Americans.
ILLEGAL ALIENS COVERED UNDER OBAMA CARE:
· Section 246 of HR 3200 states: “NO FEDERAL PAYMENT FOR UNDOCUMENTED ALIENS.”
· However, there is no enforcement provision in this section. This means that US taxpayers will be paying for the free medical care of illegal aliens!
· Rep. Dean Heller, R-Nev., offered an amendment that would have required the Federal Government to use the same database, already in existence, to check eligibility for welfare recipients to ensure illegal aliens are not in the proposed health care plan.
· The House Ways and Means Committee rejected the Heller amendment on July 17th in a straight party line vote!
OBAMA CARE TO SENIORS: JUST GO LAY DOWN AND DIE!
· I heard Obama claim that this was just an ugly rumor and was not true. However, he has also admitted that he had not read HR 3200. We have, (hold up disc) and I am here to tell you it is true!
· (Tell joke about bus wreck full of politicians!)
· Section 1233 of HR 3200 mandates a government requirement for “Advance Care Planning Consultation.” This is required “end of life” counseling for senior citizens.
· Betsy McCaughey, former lieutenant governor of New York, and a health policy expert, states the “consultation” is “no more or less than an attempt to convince seniors to die.”
· “One of the most shocking things is page 425, where Congress would make it absolutely mandatory, that every five years people in Medicare at age 65 have a required counseling session,” she said. “They will tell (them) how to end their life sooner.”
· Incredibly, it also includes a suggestion for euthanasia: withholding the “use of artificially administrated nutrition and hydration”!
· The message is clear: “Do what is in society’s best interests, and cut your life short!”
· Obama Care suggests that medical care be withheld from a person based on the expected years they may have left to live. This is blatantly unethical and a total violation of a physician’s Hippocratic Oath!
· News Flash! I have just been handed a bulletin from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control reported that life expectancy in the US has reached almost 78 years, a record high! Federal health officials also reported that the death rate has reached an ALL TIME LOW OF 760.3 DEATHS per 100,000 people!
· Folks do we really want to destroy our current health care system that has given us such improvements in medical care and prevention in order to implement socialized Obamacare?
· Obama Care plans to get us at both ends of Life!
· Sec. 1714, Pg. 769-770 Federal government mandates eligibility for State Family Planning Services, which means taxpayer funded abortions.
· To date there have been 9 amendments put forth HR 3200 and the senate version to ban taxpayer funded abortions. All 9 amendments have been defeated. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that without specific language to prohibit funding of abortions in Medicaid, they must be publicly funded.
NATIONAL HEALTH CARE WILL DENY YOU MEDICAL CARE:
· Health sections in the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act gives government bureaucrats access to your personal electronic health records. Allows these bureaucrats to make health care decisions for you!
· Allows authorization of the “Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.”
· National Coordinator will monitor treatments to make sure the doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective!
· “The National Coordinator will be able to enforce his decision as to what is appropriate treatment through sanctions against health care providers!”
· Penalties against doctors would “deter health care providers from going beyond the electronically delivered protocols.”
· The Stimulus Law calls for a single electronic medical record for every U.S. resident by the year 2014 and provides access to those records to “… the government, and other interested parties.
· In Sec. 163, Pg. 58-59, the government will have real-time access to an individual’s finances and bank accounts.
KISS YOUR PRIVATE HEALTH INSURANCE (AND THE INDUSTRY!) GOODBYE!
· In HR 3200, is a “Limitation on Enrollment” section on page 16 which states that those who currently have private individual coverage won’t be able to change it and those who change jobs, or become self employed will not be able to obtain private medical insurance!
· This will mean the death of the private insurance market/industry.
· 120 million or more will lose employer group coverage and be forced to accept the government plan.
· This will also likely mean the end of health savings accounts, thus giving final and total control of healthcare to government bureaucrats.
· HR 3200 contains 1,018 pages of new regulations that will require a person to buy whatever insurance the government demands before any other necessities of life. If you don’t you will be taxed or fined!
· HR 3200 imposes additional income tax surcharges that will push top tax rates over 50% in 39 states.
· HR 3200 will penalize employers 8% of average paid wages if the employer does not offer acceptable (to the federal government) coverage. This alone has been estimated to kill 5 million American jobs!
· HR 3200 is expected to cost over $1.6 trillion over the next 10 years, but this is probably an underestimate.
· The new Government Insurance Company will not be subject to lawsuits, will not be subject to state regulations, not subject to federal or state taxes, OSHA regulations, EPA regulations, and on and on!
· There is simply no way any private insurance industry can compete with the planned government behemoth.
· And so Obama and the government gets what they wanted all along, complete control.
· Is that what we really want? For ourselves? For our children? For our grandchildren?
THERE IS PERHAPS A SOLUTION TO THIS DILEMMA?
· The solution to this lies within all and in each of us and also in the building 100 feet behind me.
· We MUST remind our state legislators that the federal government is NOT sovereign over the states. That under the US Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, and under the 9th and 10th Amendment, it’s powers are limited and confined.
· Several States have already began moving to abolish this unconstitutional takeover of our health care by the process of state nullification.
· This is the process that the Great State of Oklahoma MUST pursue, and quickly!
Over two hundred years ago Patrick Henry said “Give me Liberty or give me Death!” Today, at this time and in this place, for myself and all Americans, that statement should be “I choose Liberty or I choose Death.” It is becoming increasingly clear that those two choices are the only ones available to us.
May God Save and Bless our Republic!
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To see the transcripts of other speakers, click on the following Transcripts link and see the posts that have “8/22 Rally” in their titles. The Sooner Tea Party will be posting the transcripts for all of the speakers who agreed to allow us to do so as soon as possible.
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