Andrew Lawless, Small Business Owner

Good'day folks,

my name is Andrew Lawless and I am a 45 year-old British small business owner that currently resides in Rockville, Maryland. I agree with all the below stated points about Obamacare and really think that it's great that we are meeting ourselves on this online platform to discuss such an important issue. Coming from the United Kingdom Obamacare has not really been anything new for me. The health care system in the United Kingdom makes Obamacare look like German health care! All jokes aside, being an immigrant entrepreneur in the United States I do have some serious issues to raise about Obamacare. As Earl and George had already mentioned, he fluctuating insurance premiums are the real issue for small business owners.  Then the insurance mandate forces me to buy Obamacare for each one of my workers. When the insurance premiums rise I and my business lose money. In order to compensate the losses often times I am forced to fire people from my pay-roll. As much as I hate doing this, sometimes its a necessary step to keep the business running. In the past three years it has just happened to often! I only employ about 40 people, imagine the effect of this on larger companies and their workers! People are losing jobs left and right Obamacare and businesses are becoming less efficient. With less workers in the workforce the country's economy also weakens. In a country such as the United States if America, which is based on capitalism and entrepreneurship, this should not happen. I believe the best alternative is to get rid of Obamacare and reimplement the Medicare system. I recon' (British slang for think) that Obamacare is a great idea, but the last thing I want to see is the United States become like England...or worse! Why do you think I left England for the US in the first place? Because the United States gave me more entrepreneurial freedom, and gave me the possibility to to give people the possibility to work for me. Obamacare is slowly taking that freedom away from me! 

Dr. Gregory Komm MD, Orange County Medical Practice

Good day Bloggers,

my name is Dr. Gregory Komm. I am currently working as a physician at the Orange County Medical Practice in Anaheim, California. I find this blog quite interesting because it really seems to have captured the 360 degree view on the topic. If I may I will also express my experiences with Obamacare and its effects. I have been a physician all of my life. The main reason why I became a doctor was not because I wanted to make a large amount of money, or open my own practice but rather because I wanted to help people. Helping people has always been my passion ever since I was a boy. Every day I go to work, I love my job. Yet in the past three years there has been a very negative trend occurring in the medical world which I have first handedly experienced. Due to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act the medical field has been experiencing moral hazard.

The patient-doctor relationship is one of the most sacred bonds in the modern history of the world. Patients have trusted doctors with their lives for decades. Since the implementation of Obamacare, this relationship has slowly deteriorated. Many physicians are starting to become corrupt in order to balance out the heavy pay-cuts Obamacare has introduced. The main way that corrupt physicians try to maximize their profits is by under treating their patients. Under Obamacare each patient, depending on his sickness or situation, is given a fixed sum of funds that his physician has at disposal in order to treat him. By under treating a patient the physician can pocket the excess money for himself. This phenomena has been taking the medical field by storm. Just yesterday I witnessed how my son's physician gave him weaker and cheaper antibiotics in order keep the rest of the money bundle for himself. Thankfully, since I am a doctor I intervened in the situation and got the corrupt physician fired. If my son had had a dangerous infection, such as a STAF infection, this could have potentially been fatal. And for what? A few measly dollars! Situations like these happen on a daily basis all around the United States. Most of them go undetected and can have unthinkable effects on patients and their families. Moral hazard, resulting form Obamacare, is not only corrupting the medical field but is also worsening the quality of health care in this country.

The public perception of doctors is worsening as time goes on. Doctors are starting to look more like crooks than people who save lives! I will not stand for something like this to happen to one of the most respected professions in the history of human kind. If Obamacare is not repealed, who knows what could happen to my beloved profession in the future. As one of my great friends Jeffrey Singer recently said about the effect of Obamacare on out profession: Medicine, in just one generation is transforming from a glorious profession into just another occupation." If we allow this to happen we have failed as humans! 

George Hill, Manager Dick's Sporting Goods

Hey blogger community,

I totally agree with Earl. My name is George Hill and i'm the manager at Dick's Sporting Goods in Gaithersburg, Maryland. I frankly do not care about politics at all. It has never been an interest of mine, and probably will never be. But I got to say that Obamacare has really made my life a whole lot harder. I didn't go to college so I don't share the shame burdens that Earl does, but I know exactly what he is going through. I am a member of the middle class, making about 40 000$ in annual income. I feel fortunate to make a decent living doing something I like to do, but forty grand a year doesn't buy you the moon. I can afford everything I need to live quite comfortably but thats it. An increase in any fixed cost can really cause a financial issue for me.

In the past year, since i've been forced to be covered by Obamacare from my employer, I have experienced high health care premiums, like Earl already stated. The fluctuating health care premiums are a huge issue but by far not the biggest for me. In order to support the bill the Obama Administration has raised my taxes from 25% to nearly 30%. A 5% increase may not seem like much but on a grand scale of things it costs me nearly two grand a year on my disposable income. For me, a person who is never really sick, its crazy to pay so much money for health care that I don't use. Also I was reading some articles that said that young Americans are paying for old, retired Americans' health care. Is that the thanks I get for voting for you Barack? All those change speeches were just hot air. I want a change now too...Change of the health care system so I can keep more of my paycheck! Repeal the bill! 

Earl Smith, 23 year-old accountant

Hey bloggers,

i'm Earl Smith and I am a twenty-three year old accountant from Cincinnati, Ohio. I'm not really interested in politics in the first place so I had not been keeping up with Obamacare. I thought to myself it probably won't affect my life so why should I care about it? I recently graduated from the University of West Virginia in 2012 and have upwards of 180 000$ in student debt. I don't know what I was thinking when I decided to sell my soul to the bank for this loan but I have it nevertheless. Now with this huge amount of debt that I have on my shoulders my 40 000$ a year income is very low. After my monthly "college mortgage" payments  I can afford basic necessities for myself (rent, food, clothes) but that is really all! Like I said, politics has never interested me, but now that Obamacare is cutting into my already meager income I am becoming active. Before Obamacare I was covered by my parent's Medicare insurance. I never had to worry about anything and life was great. Now with skyrocketing insurance premiums I feel like I am drowning! Last month I could not even afford to pay my land lord the rent because my insurance premium rose 75%. These skyrocketing premiums leave me with less disposable income, which makes my life worse. It's as simple as that! 

 I don't want to get political or anything, but I just want this to end. I can't afford to keep on paying crazy sums of money for insurance that I don't even really use. The last time I was sick was in 2008. I am a young man in prime health and I don't see why I should be paying so much money for this "social" health insurance. I want to stay insured since you never know what can happen to you, but not under this act! I think it should be repealed and the old Medicare system should fill in for it. It worked fine for more than fifty years, why did we even change it in the first place? 

Dr. Dean Rothmann, Manager Holy Child Hospital

Hello fellow bloggers,

my name is Dr. Dean Rothmann and I am the managing director at Holy Child general Hospital in Hartford, Connecticut. Firstly I must say that I do believe that the idea of Obamacare is good at its core. As a physician myself I strongly believe in the concept of affordable health care for the general population of the United States of America. The Medicare/Mediaid system was based too much on income and the capitalistic system. By this I mean that your financial stability dictated the quality of your healthcare, which is not the way it is supposed to be. One's health should not be dependent on his or her wealth.

I had very high hopes for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act when it was passed in March of 2010. I knew that as a managing director of a public hospital I may see some pay-cuts, but I saw it was a fair trade-off for a social change in the country. Now, almost four years later, I cannot believe my eyes. The great concept of Obamacare has been so heavily altered that it does not even resemble what it once was. My hospital, Holy Child general, has been going through very rough times since the passing of Obamacare. I myself and my employees have been experiencing heavy salary cuts. If this not not bad enough the Obama Administration micromanages us on a daily basis. Due to "procedural errors" my hospital has been fined nearly 200 000$! These penalties have really cut into our cash flows and have partially handicapped our capabilities to help our patients. And this only because we did not exactly adhere to Obamacare's complicated and bureaucratic system. Obamacare is trying to change the way we have been doing things since the hospital was founded in 1940. For my hospital to uphold the highest standard of medicine, we cannot be micromanaged and fined like this. It simply will not have a positive outcome if the situation does not change quickly!

Top tier hospitals such as Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, Maryland are beginning to raise the same concerns and are opting to no longer cooperate with Obamacare. If there is no change soon I will be forced to do the same for the well being of my staff, hospital and most important of all my patients.

The situation we are currently in reminds me much of Langston Hughes' poem "A Dream Differed". I just hope this differed dream does not explode!

Obamacare or NObamacare introduction

Hello fellow bloggers!

This Blog is dedicated solely to the debate if the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, should be repealed or not. Obamacare is an add-on to the United States Health Care system which is supposed to make health care qualitatively better and more affordable for the American general population. Since its implementation in March of 2010 it has experiences many road blocks and been very scrutinized. Recently the question has been arising if the act should be repealed, which is the main reason this blog was created. The blog community's voice about Obamacare needs to be heard out, and what better way to do so than on a political oriented blog about Obamacare!

Feel free to express your feelings about your  real life experiences with the bill without holding your opinion or emotions back. The main focus of this blog is to understand people's raw feelings and experiences with the act and suggest how to make  the Obamacare situation better. Once this blog receives enough traffic your voice might just be heard on a larger stage than you think. The internet is accessible to almost everyone in the United States, including prominent politicians. The ultimate goal is to have President Barack Obama read our blog, and maybe even answer some open questions about the bill. This is an ambitious goal but nothing is impossible in this great country. After every blog post our administrative team will leave a comment summing up the essential points of each post to make it more clear for other bloggers and readers. On that note, let the blogging begin! 

Louis J. de Naurois

Obamacare or NObamacare Blog Administration