New Illinois Law to Centralize Health Care

My eldest daughter works as a billing specialist for a doctor here in Chicago. Her job more or less requires that she familiarize herself with the laws regulating doctors and the insurance industry. Unlike the layman who simply wants to see a doctor when illness strikes and be able to afford the treatments offered in order to get well again, she has to get into the guts of a system that requires 1500+ page tomes trying to determine the cost for treating every malady imaginable. As such, she has been studying a proposed new law, The State Health Care Innovation Plan, or SHCIP, that the Illinois legislature will soon be voting on. It is 200+ pages or so long, and what she has read concerned her so that she gave me the first 8 pages to read to ask me what I thought of it.

I have to admit, I find reading legalese quite tedious, but I was interested in this legislation since it would affect how just about everyone in the state of Illinois goes about shopping for their health care needs. I think everyone should be interested in this law since it puts the state between the patient and one's doctor and regulates all aspects of the relationship one has with one's doctor.

The main gist is that all health care providers will need to be a part of an organization. There are, of course, a number of different organizations that can be chosen from. The organizations will be formed around a primary care physician, and all specialty services will need to be referred out through the PCP. The organization will be paid by the insurance companies, not by the procedures they perform, but in a bulk payment, known as capitation, once a month, to be distributed by the organization to their physicians, not by how much work the doctors have done, but by however they see fit. The doctors are becoming slaves and you no longer have a choice in what health care services you're allowed to receive.

As I read the first 8 pages of this law, the first thing that struck me is that it read more like a report than a law. They were citing statistics. They were pointing out flaws in the current system. They were discussing a vision for the future of health care in Illinois that they had. It was more like I was reading a sales pitch rather than a law. It was almost as if they were trying to justify to themselves what they were about to do as well as to everyone else. Bad ideas often need massive amounts of righteous justification before they are implemented, if for no other reason than to give the politically powerful the ability to use the "good intentions" excuse when things go wrong and individuals are harmed. When I finished reading these eight pages, I had a vague idea of what they were trying to say and do, but I wasn't quite certain. I wasn't even sure if it was a law since, well, you know, laws should usually be straight forward and explain what you can and cannot do. I called my daughter and asked her what I had just read, since she has to deal with these matters every day.

Her insight confirmed my suspicions. They are trying to rid the state of private health care practitioners. Any doctor with a private practice will not be welcome in the state of Illinois, and the Illinois state government will go to any length to make sure that anyone who tries to defy them and run a private practice will find it very difficult to do so. If you are not a member of an organization, or some other "health care entity," as they like to call it, you are going to be subjected to unfair regulations and scrutiny in an effort to scare off the mavericks that might try to question the system.

When I was a kid, we went to a nice doctor that my family knew and trusted for most of our health problems that arose, and as a child I had plenty of health issues. His name was Dr. Gibson and I remember him as a kindly old man who showed genuine care and compassion for us. I remember that my family had a wonderful relationship with this man. It seems to me that this is the kind of relationships the powers that be don't want us to have anymore. They can't have doctors actually caring for their patients. That could interfere with the "business" of health care.

A doctor who cares too much for his patients might not care enough about profit and might actually try to buck a system that wants to recommend procedures that are more profitable above procedures that might actually produce a cure for a given condition. They don't want doctors thinking for themselves, they want doctors to have to come to a consensus. After all, isn't that what politics is all about, consensus building? It's only natural, then, that when politicians have their say in the field of health care - and they do have their say for they are creating and passing the laws that regulate it - they create a system they are familiar with.

Combine this with the for profit corporations that have bought out governments at all levels and you have a combination lethal to small businesses and start ups. In the health care industry this means doctors wanting to start their own practices and treat patients one on one, face to face. The corporations don't want to face that kind of competition and so they ask their friends in powerful political positions to create laws which make it nigh impossible for such competition to grow roots. These for profit corporations are the insurance companies that have come to dominate that industry. They are the ones who want the doctors corralled into "health care entities" so that they can maintain not only control over their activities, but their livelihoods as well. That's what it boils down to, complete control.

Large corporations like those that dominate the health care insurance industry want to create and protect monopolies for themselves so that they can profit all the more from the services they offer. The best way for them to protect their monopolies is to turn to those who have a monopoly on legitimate force and ask them to create laws to make it difficult for competitors to compete. To accomplish this, the political class has taken to illusion. They want the common folk to believe they are being compassionate. They pass laws designed to profit their corporate buddies under the guise of compassion. At the same time they want to remove anyone else's ability to show compassion. In essence, it's not enough that they create a monopoly in health care, they need to create a monopoly on compassion also in order to justify the system they want to establish.

The Illinois law is a tributary of the ACA. It most likely would never have even been conceived if Obamacare had not passed. Now it is taking a bad law and making it even worse. Illinois is trying to become the most SSR like of all the SSRs in the USSA. This law will pass so long as most people remain unaware and allow it to happen. The only way now to prevent such laws from passing is to speak up and speak out against these intrusive and restrictive laws. Let them know you want choice over mandates. Let them know you want the freedom to determine for yourself the kind of health care you want. Otherwise they will continue to take those choices away from you until you have but one choice, their monopoly, and you will take that choice whether you like it or not.

If you enjoy my writings, please visit szandorblestman.com to make a donation.

Below is a list of all my works available at smashwords.com. Please help me by purchasing one or more of my ebooks and writing favorable reviews if you like them so that others might also find and enjoy them.

Caged in America: A Collection of Essays Celebrating Freedom. By Szandor Blestman

Ron Paul's Wisdom, A Layman's Perspective. A Collection of Opinion Editorials. By Szandor Blestman

Galaxium. A screenplay By Matthew Ballotti

The Colors of Elberia; book 1 of The Black Blade Trilogy. By Matthew Ballotti

The Legacy of the Tareks; book 2 of The Black Blade Trilogy. By Matthew Ballotti

The Power of the Tech; book 3 of The Black Blade Trilogy. By Matthew Ballotti

The Edge of Sanity. By Matthew Ballotti

The Ouijiers By Matthew Ballotti

The Law: Spirit and Letter, Enforcers and Corruption

Here's something not too many people know. Back in the mid 1980s, I was accepted to a couple of graduate school law programs. I never really told anyone because I decided I didn't want to go. Or rather I told myself that life had decided for me and that I couldn't afford to go. There have been times in my life when I have wondered how things would have turned out for me had I gone. Perhaps my life would have been better, perhaps not. I wonder if I would have let knowledge of the law corrupt me, as it seems to have done to so many others. I wonder if I would have let knowledge of this secretive and highly influential language taint my world view, or if I would have somehow managed to remain true to my morals and principles despite subjecting myself to the poisonous rot that passes itself off as law these days.

As it stands today, I have the clarity of hindsight to base my thoughts upon. I think that perhaps I have a better understanding of the law than many current day lawyers. At least I don't have the burden of knowing that I need the masses of people to not understand the nuances of law in order to make a living. I believe, as do many others, that the law should be written in plain English, or whatever language the masses understand, so that everyone understands it, not just a few who can then manipulate the language to their benefit. I believe we should do away with this language known as legalese which has a tendency to take common words and change their meaning for uncommon purposes.

The law should be simple. You don't harm others. You don't steal from others. Things like that. Of course there's going to be extenuating circumstances that might come about from time to time and these things should be considered, but the basics remain simple. So many people seem to worship this thing we call "the law" that it almost seems spiritual in nature. Yet spirit can be evil as well as good. Spirit can be detrimental as well as beneficial. There is a spirit behind these laws and that spirit should be designed to provide justice for someone who may be victimized by a powerful entity. The law ceases to be legitimate when it becomes the powerful entity that is victimizing the common folk.

In today's society, it is not the spirit of a law that is enforced, but the letter of the law. For instance, if a law says do not cross a street except at the crosswalk or you will be fined, you could be fined even if you had a legitimate reason for breaking that law such as trying to avoid someone who means to cause you harm. We'd like to think that those who enforce the law could use their discretion to understand when the spirit of the law is being violated as opposed to the letter of the law, but this is hardly ever the case. We'd like to think that judges and juries would be able to do the same, but this is again hardly ever the case. Enforcers enforce the letter of the law, no matter how much harm that letter might do to another human being. Judges and juries only judge guilt or innocence via interpreting the letter of the law, not it's spirit.

The power of the law is its spirit. That power has been usurped due to the desire for expedience and the laziness of the common folk. It has been corrupted due to governmental greed and the desire of the ruling class to control the masses. The justice system itself has become one huge injustice, one huge miscarriage of justice, one huge revenue generating mill that punishes the innocent by encouraging plea bargains where they plead guilty to a lesser charge to avoid attorney costs and jail time, protects the guilty in the same way, and upholds bad laws by not allowing or encouraging juries to judge the law itself over and above the defendant's guilt or innocence.

Today's laws are selectively enforced. They are often created by the dictates of government agencies controlled by the executive branch rather than through the conscientious debates of the legislative branch. Those with political power or who are able to afford the cost of political favors can oft times be excluded from the law while those without who can't afford it must suffer the consequences of a law that causes harm. Such is what we see in this huge 1600+ page monstrosity of a law that is fallaciously entitled the "Affordable Care Act" and more commonly known as Obamacare. It may have a well meaning spirit, but its letter is malicious and malignant. It is the letter of this law that will be enforced and as this happens its spirit vanishes into the ethers as a dystopian society sprouts into being.

The federal government has attempted to shut down some of its more innocuous aspects supposedly over the attempt to defund the implementation of this bill. The executive branch has failed miserably in its attempts to deny the public certain services (that should cost it extremely little to no money to provide) and to point the finger of blame at a certain political party. Many people now understand what this is really all about and that closing national monuments and parks is no way to go about solving this problem. It is my hope that those in the political class who are making a stand against funding Obamacare will take it one step further and repeal the entire law.

Yet I don't hold much hope that this will happen. There are powerful interests that want this law implemented no matter the consequences. As many have discovered and as I have said from the beginning it is the insurance companies who benefit greatly from this law, not the common folk. Think about it for a moment, how much better off would you be if you could get the federal government to mandate that everyone had to own the product or buy the service that you offer? With premiums going through the roof and the government forcing all to either buy the insurance or get fined, many will soon find that they will have much less cash to spend on things like food, rent, gas for the car, clothes, and other little necessities of life. Some may find they won't be able to afford such luxuries as new shoes for their kids. Some may have to leave their nicer homes in favor of more affordable abodes. Some may find they just can't afford to be alive after they are fired or reduced to part time labor all for the sake of a few insurance company executives whose companies' profits needed to be boosted by law.

Someday this law may indeed go into effect, and it may be someday soon. When this happens the people need to disobey. They need to simply not sign up for the mandated insurance. They need to simply say "no." When this happens they need to refuse to pay the fines. They need to, whenever possible, dare the establishment to come arrest them. They need to, in effect, grow a pair. When enough of the productive in society are threatened by government, something has to give. When this happens, it is my hope that the enforcers will side with the people who produce, not with the criminal, parasitic government. Bad law should not be enforced. When the letter of the law is harmful it should be judged illegitimate. No law that does such harm should be implemented in a free society, but if it is than it will be time for the people to stand and push back against it.

If you enjoy my writings, please visit szandorblestman.com to make a donation.

Below is a list of all my works available at smashwords.com. Please help me by purchasing one or more of my ebooks and writing favorable reviews if you like them so that others might also find and enjoy them.

Caged in America: A Collection of Essays Celebrating Freedom. By Szandor Blestman

Ron Paul's Wisdom, A Layman's Perspective. A Collection of Opinion Editorials. By Szandor Blestman

Galaxium. A screenplay By Matthew Ballotti

The Colors of Elberia; book 1 of The Black Blade Trilogy. By Matthew Ballotti

The Legacy of the Tareks; book 2 of The Black Blade Trilogy. By Matthew Ballotti

The Power of the Tech; book 3 of The Black Blade Trilogy. By Matthew Ballotti

The Edge of Sanity. By Matthew Ballotti

The Ouijiers By Matthew Ballotti