Why the ObamaCare Ruling Stinks [View all]

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Apparently, it's not just the right wing that doesn't like Obama's health plan. They may hate it for all the wrong reasons, but here's Dave Lindorf's take on it:

"The real losers in the latest Supreme Court decision, however, are the people of the United States. Not those who will be required to go out and buy some over-priced, minimal coverage, rip-off insurance plan offered by the private insurance industry, or to pay a “tax” to the IRS for not doing so, but everyone.

"This is because the Affordable Health Care Act is not affordable. It does little or nothing to control health care costs, which are destined to continue to gobble up an ever increasing amount of the total US Gross Domestic Product as well as of corporate profits and families’ incomes.""

What? But Obama said it would reduce drug costs by $80 billion, right? Not so fast. As Greg Palast pointed out:

"I checked out the government's health stats (at HHS.gov), put fresh batteries in my calculator and totted up US spending on prescription drugs projected by the government for the next ten years. It added up to $3.6 trillion.

"In other words, Obama's big deal with Big Pharma saves $80 billion out of a total $3.6 trillion. That's 2%. ...

"The Big Pharma kingpins did not actually agree to cut their prices. Their promise with Obama is something a little oilier: they apparently promised that, over ten years, they will reduce the amount at which they would otherwise raise drug prices. Got that? In other words, the Obama deal locks in a doubling of drug costs, projected to rise over the period of "savings" from a quarter trillion dollars a year to half a trillion dollars a year. Minus that 2% [$80 billion]."

And what about those FDA approved drugs? Turns out those FDA approved "safe" drugs kill 106,000 people a year from correctly prescribed doses. Got that? 106,000 people per year are killed from adverse affects by so-called safe, FDA approved, correctly prescribed drugs. Now that Obama has consulted with the Pharmaceuticals to allow the doubling of their profits in 10 years he can rest assured that now that 30 million extra people will be insured (an extra 10%) another 300,000 people will be murdered by these drugs.

What, you say? The research said they were safe?! Well, turns out, the doctors in bed with big Pharma don't actually do very scientific research. As Dr. Marcia Angell has written:

"The problems I’ve discussed are not limited to psychiatry, although they reach their most florid form there. Similar conflicts of interest and biases exist in virtually every field of medicine, particularly those that rely heavily on drugs or devices. It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine."

Pseudo science backed health "care" for all of us. No thanks. I'll pay the tax instead.