National Doctors Group Files Lawsuit Against Pro-Abortion Health Care Law
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
March 29, 2010
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — A nationwide doctors group is the first medical society to file a lawsuit against the new pro-abortion health care law President Barack Obama recently signed. The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons filed suit in federal court against the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).
AAPS filed the suit Friday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
"If the PPACA goes unchallenged, then it spells the end of freedom in medicine as we know it," Jane Orient, M.D., the director of AAPS, said in a statement. "Courts should not allow this massive intrusion into the practice of medicine and the rights of patients."
"There will be a dire shortage of physicians if the PPACA becomes effective and is not overturned by the courts," Dr. Orient added.
The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons says the new government-run health care system, which will likely fund and promote abortions despite an executive order Obama signed last week, requires most Americans to buy government-approved insurance starting in 2014, or face stiff penalties.
The doctors group says that requirement violates the Fifth Amendment protection against the government forcing one person to pay cash to another. AAPS is the first to assert this important constitutional claim, it contends.
AAPS also says the health care law violates the Tenth Amendment, the Commerce Clause, and the provisions authorizing taxation. The Taxing and Spending power cannot be invoked, as the premiums go to private insurance companies. The traditional sovereignty of the States over the practice of medicine is destroyed by the PPAC, it argues.
Court action is necessary "to preserve individual liberty" and "to prevent PPACA from bankrupting the United States generally and Medicare and Social Security specifically," the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons says.
The point about a doctor shortage resulting from the implementation of the new health care law is one that pro-life groups have noted since the beginning of the debate on health care.
A survey that appeared recently in the New England Journal of Medicine responded to that concern.
The Medicus Firm, a leading physician search and consulting firm based in Atlanta and Dallas, conducted the survey that found 46.3% of primary care physicians (family medicine and internal medicine) feel that the passing of a public option will either force them out of medicine or make them want to leave medicine.
Another 62.7% of physicians feel that health reform is needed but should be implemented in a more targeted, gradual way, as opposed to the sweeping overhaul that is in legislation.
The survey also found 41% of physicians feel that income and practice revenue will “decline or worsen dramatically” and 30% feel income will “decline or worsen somewhat” with a public option.
Just 28.7 percent of doctors supported the pro-abortion health care bill before the House approved it.
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