Is ObamaCare D.O.A. or are we?

• Author: Davis, Mark
• Position: Medicine & Health

THE U.S. SYSTEM of health care delivery is one of the best in the world. Tens of millions seek medical services yearly, most of whom are treated successfully for their ills. Yet, a small percentage of this group fails to achieve a similar success story. Consequently, a harsh reality encumbers a segment of society in their search for the healing process. This failure is the substance of an indictment brought to bear by an overreaching government that seeks equity in the system. In the end, that is an unrealistic goal. Present day medical services offer an array of choices from basic care to sophisticated diagnostics and therapeutics. Costs associated with these variant levels of care move along a similar spectrum with the latter end out of reach except for the wealthiest amongst us.

Population demographics indicate the nation's inhabitants number more than 317,000,000. Some 900,000 physicians are licensed to perform the task of managing the medical services for this vast number of people. Of this group, approximately 80% perform direct patient services. The rest are embedded in administrative roles through government entities or private functions. Nearly 3,000,000 nurses, nurse practitioners, and physicians assistants supplement the services of their physician colleagues. Day to day medical miracles are performed in 5,800 registered hospitals, thousands of clinics, innumerable physicians' offices, and a variety of other health outlets that complete the circle of this expansive system.

During the early days of the 111th Congress, the Democratic majority, in both Houses, diligently began the foundations of a piece of legislation we now know as ObamaCare. As it was nearing completion in 2010, a heightened level of negative rhetoric was heard against the prevailing system. Insurance companies and the pharmaceutical and health industries found themselves demonized harshly by a government that was planning to nationalize the medical system.

On March 23, 2010, a several thousand page legislative effort, written end to end by lawyers and passed by both Houses of Congress on the slimmest of margins, was signed into law. With the swipe of a pen, one-sixth of the U.S. economy and control of America's health system was usurped by Federal bureaucrats who forgot one small point: no one knew its contents.

Designated--but not designed--as a cure-all for the ills of a system that had a minor cold, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act may be a historic first. Nearly every voting member in the House of Representatives and...