CONTACT:
Deborah Hamilton, Hamilton Strategies, Media@HamiltonStrategies.com, 610.584.1096, ext. 102, or Patrick Benner, ext. 104
ST. PAUL, Minn.—The majority of voters will have health care on their minds when they vote next Tuesday.
According to a Kaiser Family Foundation Election Tracking Poll, 71 percent of voters say health care is a “very important” issue for the midterm elections. In fact, about a third (30 percent) say it is the “most important” issue.
With health care a crucial election matter, Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom (CCHF) wants to make sure Americans are informed about what a candidate’s support for a mandate to cover uninsurable pre-existing condition means for the future of health care costs, access and quality.
“Americans must not cast their vote based on the pre-existing condition issue,” said CCHF president and co-founder Twila Brase. “The entire premise of socialized medicine is government-mandated coverage for pre-existing conditions. Unfortunately, Americans who support pre-existing condition coverage often don’t know they are supporting socialized medicine and, with it, higher costs, decreased access to services, delays, denials and reduced quality of care. True insurance indemnifies against the risk of getting a condition. Therefore, candidates who support government-mandated coverage for uninsurable pre-existing conditions support socialism and government control of doctors and hospitals. We should solve the uninsurable, pre-existing condition problem, not use it to socialize medicine.”
Brase noted that most states—35 in all—had affordable, popular plans for people with uninsurable conditions until Obamacare outlawed them. The Obamacare mandate to cover uninsurable conditions eliminated real insurance and made premiums unaffordable and unattractive.
“Unfortunately, Republicans do not seem to know how to argue against the pre-existing condition mandate,” she said. “They may be too focused on coverage and not focused enough on care. It’s easy to say yes to covering everything and politically difficult to explain why government-mandated coverage for uninsurable conditions is a bad idea for patients, medical excellence and health freedom. I’ve yet to hear them tell Americans that the pre-existing condition mandate is the cornerstone of socialized medicine and the cornerstone of Obamacare. I’ve yet to hear them argue that, as in Canada and England, many of the covered will find it difficult to access the chronic and catastrophic care they need under a socialized medicine scheme.”
True insurance no longer exists because of the pre-existing uninsurable condition mandate, Brase added. In its place is the health plan, a corporate version of socialized medicine set up to centralize data, decisions and dollars, with the authority to ration care.
“The real answer is to uninsurable pre-existing conditions is to move away from the cause of them,” Brase continued. “Pre-existing conditions emerge primarily from aging out of family coverage or losing employer-sponsored coverage. We should move away from employer-sponsored coverage and family coverage and return to individual insurance, preferably for a lifetime and purchased before birth by parents for the child. Tax equity would be a great place to start. Give everyone the same tax break employers get so the market for individual policies grows. Then repeal the ACA’s prohibition on catastrophic indemnity policies. And then encourage indemnity companies to sell parents individual policies for their pre-born child—policies that can last a lifetime. And then encourage and expand charity options for care for those who truly need it.”
Besides discussing the downfalls of socialized medicine and the conundrum of uninsurable conditions, Brase’s new book, “Big Brother in the Exam Room: The Dangerous Truth About Electronic Health Records,” published this summer by Beaver’s Pond Press, also exposes how and why Congress forced doctors and hospitals to install a data-collecting, command-and-control surveillance system in the exam room. “Big Brother in the Exam Room,” already in its second printing with hundreds of backorders logged, also shines light on the “HIPAA deception” and includes the negative impact of EHRs on privacy, personalized care, costs, patient safety and more, according to doctors and data from more than 125 studies. Learn more at www.BigBrotherInTheExamRoom.
For more information about CCHF, visit www.cchfreedom.org, its Facebook page or its Twitter feed @CCHFreedom. Read more about “Big Brother in the Exam Room” here, and view the media page for CCHF here. For more about CCHF’s free-market, cash-based care initiative, The Wedge of Health Freedom, visit www.JointheWedge.com, The Wedge Facebook page or follow The Wedge on Twitter @wedgeoffreedom.