Obamacare is about Your Money, Not Your Health

“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying all the wrong remedies.” — Groucho Marx

The politics of selling the Affordable Care Act (ACA) focuses on promising health and wellness. Somehow, having “coverage” is supposed to get you to a primary care doctor, who will keep you healthy. And if he doesn’t, he will be held accountable by not being paid.

The fact is that “health care reform” is not going to cure America’s health problems.

Physicians, think tanks, and politicians are pointing out a myriad of problems with ACA. But most of them miss the main point, which starts with calling it “health care reform.” The term, and the conversation about it, conflates health care and medical care. But they are not the same thing. Individuals are in charge of their own health care. Physicians provide medical care to those who become sick.

Health reform begins with making it clear that individuals’ health is in their own hands. The relationship between personal behavior and health is clear. Almost all of the illnesses that we can prevent are related to smoking, over-eating, lack of exercise, alcohol or drug abuse, high-risk behavior, or too much sun exposure.

According to the CDC, 19% of all U.S. adults (43.8 million people) smoke tobacco. Almost one-third of adults living below the poverty line smoke. Adverse effects include heart and vascular disease, stroke, emphysema, bronchitis and cancer (lung, oral, esophageal, and likely bladder, kidney and pancreas). Smoking tobacco is responsible for almost $200 billion in lost productivity and medical care expenditures per year.

Under ACA, doctors will check a box saying they asked about smoking and counseled people to quit. But the decision is up to the patient.

One-third of American adults and 17% of children are obese. Consequences include fatty liver disease, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, gallbladder disease, osteoarthritis, breathing problems, sleep apnea, pregnancy complications, and increased surgical risk. In 2011, the estimated annual medical care costs of obesity-related illness were nearly $200 billion, or 21 percent of annual medical spending in the United States.

Such costs are expected to rise if we allow today’s obese children to grow into obese adults. Obesity must not become the new normal. Indeed, a recent study concluded that since black women are more likely than white women to be satisfied with their weight and have less social pressure to lose weight, merely maintaining their current level of obesity was a success!

Prevention of obesity occurs at home: in the kitchen, at the dinner table and while shopping. Not in the doctor’s office.

One-fourth of American adults don’t participate in any physical activities. Exercise can lower the risk of heart disease, stroke, dementia, colon cancer, breast cancer in post-menopausal women, and endometrial cancer.

More than half of all cancers related to lifestyle factors: 25% to 30% to tobacco, and 30% to 35% to obesity, physical inactivity and poor nutrition. Certain cancers are related to sexually transmitted diseases such as hepatitis B, human papillomavirus infections (genital warts), or human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Many skin cancers are caused by sun exposure.

We will have healthier people only if patients value their own health as much as good doctors do. And doctors must practice what they preach — who is going to listen to an obese doctor or nurse?

Some patients place a higher priority on enjoying risky behavior than on their health. ACA will not make them healthy. It only shields them somewhat from the consequences of their actions by forcing people who do take care of their health to share their costs.

Government cannot make us healthy, not even by trying to prohibit overindulgence or bad habits. Certainly, ACA’s massive new regulations, erosion of privacy and higher taxes don’t bring health. But ACA’s subsidies compound our unhealthy reliance on government.

ACA redistributes the money flowing through the system. But your health care is still your responsibility. We can make others share the health plan premiums, but the pain and suffering are still the patients’ to endure.

Article provided by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.

Marilyn M. Singleton, MD, JD is a board-certified anesthesiologist and Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) member. Dr. Singleton completed two years of Surgery residency at UCSF, then her Anesthesia residency at Harvard’s Beth Israel Hospital. She was an instructor, then Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland before returning to California for private practice.

While still working in the operating room, she attended UC Berkeley Law School, focusing on constitutional law and administrative law. She interned at the National Health Law Project and practiced insurance and health law. She teaches classes in the recognition of elder abuse and constitutional law for non-lawyers.

Dr. Singleton recently returned from El Salvador where she conducted make-shift medical clinics in two rural villages. Her latest presentation to physicians was at the AAPS annual meeting about challenging the political elite.