It is now two years since March 23, 2010, when President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA, better known as Obamacare) into law. While the date may be little remembered,  the law and its passage should live in infamy.
Read the statement of the Catholic Medical Association marking this anniversary after the break.

A Statement of the Catholic Medical Association

• Obamacare will add, not merely “one dime” to the deficit, but hundreds of billions of dollars, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, which also reported that total health-care expenditures will rise more each year than if the law had not   been passed.
• Far from seeing their health insurance premiums go down by $2,500,  people have seen their health insurance premiums rise by $2,200 since   the beginning of President Obama’s term.
• Most Americans will not keep the health insurance policies they enjoyed in 2010 and, given the   unpopularity of Obamacare among physicians—and the failure of Obamacare to provide a fair and long-term solution to the “doc fix”—many Americans may not be able to keep the same relationship they have had with their doctors.

• Obamacare would vest too much power in the federal government. America’s founders called for a limited federal government  because   they saw the expense and inefficiencies created by the bureaucracies of   their time, and because they knew that centralized power undermined   human freedom. (This American value is mirrored closely by the principle of subsidiarity in Catholic   social teaching.) Obamacare has already demonstrated all the deficits of a centralized, remote and powerful bureaucracy, from its complete failure to manage health insurance pools for high-risk patients, to thousands of politically motivated waivers from the law, to its most recent decision to order every health   insurance provider and plan to subsidize abortifacients, sterilizations,  and contraceptives.  In announcing the latter mandate, the Obama   administration moved quickly from defining which faith-based   institutions were religious enough to be exempted, to ordering insurance   companies to make these things available for “free.”
• Obamacare would provide federal funding for abortions. While the House bill passed on November 2009 excluded all federal funding of abortion by incorporating the Hyde amendment, this provision was purposefully kept out of the Senate bill. Following the passage of   Obamacare, Obama’s supporters gloated over how   Rep. Stupak was fooled. Advocates for the PPACA fought efforts to effectively exclude funding for abortion under the new law.  Following an official report of the Congressional Research Service, there can be no doubt that Obamacare provides federal funding for abortion and forces everyone to pay for it   in insurance plans which include abortion as a benefit.
• Obamacare would not provide adequate protection for rights of conscience, both for individuals and institutions.  During the passage of Obamacare, no provision was made for   comprehensive respect for conscience rights commensurate with the scope   of the new law. In addition, existing protections of state laws were left uncertain by the poor process of drafting the law. In February 2011, HHS gutted   the only   federal regulation  which provided concrete resources for applying existing federal conscience laws, and responsible attempts to amend Obamacare to restore long-term federal conscience laws (including H.R.  3, The No Taxpayer Funding of Abortion Act, and H.R. 358, The Protect Life Act) in the House of Representatives have been stonewalled by the Democrat-controlled Senate. The HHS mandate shows the extent to which the Obama administration is willing to coerce not only people of faith,  but anyone with moral objections to its mandates, to   violate their conscience and deepest beliefs.