The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) was signed in to law by President Obama on March 23, 2010. Doctor Patient Medical Association believes this law, with over 12,000 pages of new laws and regulations giving sweeping new powers to political appointees like the HHS Secretary and IRS is detrimental to the medical freedom of medical professionals and patients.

It is DPMA's position that PPACA is the Destruction Of Our Medicine, attempting to insert the government and bureaucrats between the relationship and decisions of medical professional and their patient.

For more information, please read the following:

PPACA = DOOM, facts and figures at your fingertip

DPMA led coalition letter urging repeal of PPACA

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) established  a national, voluntary insurance program for purchasing community living services and supports known as the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports program (CLASS Act).  The program came with a provision;  a built-in requirement that the program be "actuarially sound" according to "techniques and methodologies...generally accepted within the actuarial profession" as certified by the Medicare Chief Actuary.  CLASS was a key contributor to the passage of PPACA because it allowed proponents to claim the bill reduced the deficit by $70 billion - counting CLASS program enrollees' premiums as "revenue."  (The program was set to start collecting premiums for eight years of the ten year budget window (at the time, 2010-2019), but not pay any benefits until 2017.)

As many expected, it was not possible for the actuarially sound requirement to be met.  On October 14, 2011, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius reported to Congress that this problem could not be overcome, and “despite our best analytical efforts, I do not see a viable path forward for CLASS implementation at this time.”  HHS recommended to suspend implementation of CLASS Act.  See the full report here.  (http://aspe.hhs.gov/daltcp/reports/2011/class/CLASSmemo.shtml)

Doctor Patient Medical Association supports the Obama Administration's decision to not implement CLASS.  In addition, we support full repeal of CLASS to ensure that future administrations do not attempt to reinstate the program and provide a permanent fix.  Unless the CLASS Act is repealed, the temporary protection of this suspension is to the whim of the Secretary of HHS. It is necessary to eliminate the underlying statutory provisions authorizing the program.

Section 3403 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) established the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), responsible to reduce the per capita rate of growth in Medicare spending.  IPAB is a panel of 15 independent, unelected bureaucrats with unilateral authority, whose decisions are freed from judicial and administrative review.  Congress cannot delegate away it's legislative responsibilities under the Constitution.  The decisions of IPAB will most certainly cut payments to physicians under Medicare, limit patient access and quality to medical care. 

Doctor Patient Medical Association is not supportive of the IPAB and urges repeal.  DPMA recognizes there is a problem with Medicare spending and need for savings, but IPAB is not the right approach.  Private contracting, tort reform, permitting charity care will provide the stability and certainty that physicians and patients need.

• IPAB Coalition Letter - Taxpayer Perspective
• DPMA led coalition letter, signed by 26 organizations

The Balanced Budget Act of 1997 included a provision which allowed seniors to enter into private contracts with physicians and health care practitioners for services that would not otherwise be covered by Medicare.

But there's a catch. Any doctor or health care provider who wants to set up a contract must sign an affidavit agreeing to stop seeing any Medicare patients for two years. This means that a doctor who wants to enter into one single private contract with one single patient must refrain from accepting ANY Medicare-eligible patients who want to file claims for Medicare coverage.

This has made it more difficult for Medicare patients to find doctors who are willing to treat them. Patients who want to preserve their Medicare coverage are not allowed to pay out of their own pockets for the services they choose.