To the Editor:

Recently, after a serious falling accident, I experienced medical treatment from our local health care system at Highlands-Cashiers Hospital and at Asheville’s Mission Hospital. Doctors and nurses at Highlands-Cashiers Hospital saved my life and I spent 10 days in Mission’s ICU getting well.

My treatment and care at both hospitals was, in my opinion, the best there is. Highly qualified doctors, nurses, staff and specialists in both hospitals exhibited the utmost in professionalism and impeccable care.

It saddens me to think that our children and grandchildren will never know this quality of health care. As Obamacare unfolds, we are seeing how, with this onerous law, the federal government dominates the system and we will watch as the quality of medical care declines. Government is inserted into what should be strictly a patient/doctor system. As bureaucrats in government agencies dictate how doctors and hospitals treat us, good doctors will leave the primary care profession and hospitals, especially emergency rooms, will be overrun with more patients than they are equipped to handle.  

Obamacare requires continuing higher taxes to support the increase in commitment to such things as free access to contraception, sterilization and the abortion drug Ella. As Obamacare expenses kicks in, either Medicare spending will be cut or deficits will rise. Because of Obamacare’s unrealistic mandates, businesses are opting out of providing employer-based insurance and insurance companies are raising premiums. It is estimated that families will pay an average of $20,000 annually for medical insurance under Obamacare. So there you have it for families — higher taxes and health care expense, a decline in health care quality, and the federal government dominating one-fifth of our economy.

It angers me that our Congress passed Obamacare under backroom pressure pushed on faltering members and even bribes to fund state wish lists were granted to those who continued to hold out their vote. The U.S House of Representatives voted in favor of the bill after being told by Speaker Nancy Pelosi that “we have to pass the bill to find out what is in it!” Would you sign on to any legal document, contract or even your child’s permission slip for a school trip without knowing what is in it? I don’t think so. Yet members of Congress did just that. They passed the bill and now agency bureaucrats throughout government like the Department of Health and Human Services and the IRS are writing the details of the “law” we have to follow.

It encourages me that individual states are refusing to be bullied by the federal government. Many, including North Carolina, have rejected the state-based insurance exchanges that require funding states do not have. We can hope that these sovereign states and voters will demand that Congress delay, repeal or reform Obamacare and replace it with a patient/doctor centered, non-federally dominated, market-based plan.

Carol Adams

Glenville