Obama's cousin, Dr. Milton Wolf, pans Obamacare

My message is simple: Patients will suffer under ObamaCare.

This plan goes "all in" on the government failures that have already had a tremendously detrimental effect on medicine. It's not that health care rationing might happen under the plan; it's that it will. In fact, it's already written into the plan.

Section 3403 of the Senate bill creates the Medicare Advisory Board, the express purpose of which is to reduce funding for Medicare. These unelected, unaccountable officials are required to make recommendations for Medicare cuts. These recommendations will have the effect of law, even if the Congress does not act on them.

We are given a preview of what this rationing board will try in section 3007 of the Senate bill. This portion of the health care bill addresses a scheme that actually penalizes your primary care doctor for providing the care he has determined that your family needs. The top ten percent of doctors who refer patients to specialists, no matter how valid the reason, will be penalized. This ignores the expertise of the family care physician. It does not care if your daughter hurt her arm and needs an orthopedic surgeon. It does not care if your mother is short of breath and needs a pulmonologist. It matters to them only how many of your doctor's patients are sick enough to need a specialist.

There's no other way to say it: "ObamaCare" penalizes your doctor for providing medical care. This is rationing. It will get worse as costs continue their upward climb and more doctors opt out of Medicare and medicine altogether.