A medical doctor in the crucial swing state of Ohio is publishing a 2,000-word letter slamming President Barack Obama’s health care law as full-page ads in local newspapers ahead of the presidential election.
Dr. Farid Naffah, a gastroenterologist in Warren, Ohio, wrote “The Risks and Perils of Obamacare” letter that has run both twice in the Tribune Chronicle and once in the Youngstown Vindicator in Ohio over the last week.
In a Thursday interview with The Daily Caller, Naffah said it’s possible he’ll continue to run the letter as full page ads in Ohio newspapers before the election.
The names of more than 40 doctors are listed as supportive of the letter, which states that Obamacare “is an administrative and fiscal disaster, bringing higher health care costs, a severe physician shortage and the rationing of medical services.”
“The people know us here,” Naffah told TheDC.
“We are the physicians of the community,” Naffah said. “When people look at an article like this, the first thing they look at is who signed it. And when people see our names, they recognize them. People tend to trust their doctors.”
After writing the letter, Naffah said he faxed a copy of it to various physicians. In just two days, he had 42 signatures, he said.
Since the letter ran, Naffah said more doctors have asked if he could add their names to the essay. Therefore, he said, he may run the advertisement again before the election.
“If the Affordable Care Act is not socialized medicine it will of necessity lead to it, by the exercise of regulatory mechanisms and fiscal pressure,” Naffah writes in the essay.
“Medicine will no longer be a liberal profession,” he argues, “but a government job, where your physician’s desire to excel in the delivery of care will cede its place to the fulfillment of government imposed requirements, the adherence to imperious rules and the fear of retribution.”
In the letter, the doctor argues that, “If all you know about Obamacare is that it will provide insurance to 32 million Americans who don’t have it; that patients with pre-existing conditions may not be excluded from coverage; that certain screening procedures are offered without co-payments, and that children may remain on their parents’ plan until the age of twenty-six, you would have no reason to fear or oppose it.”
“Sadly, that is exactly where the Obama White House wants you to be: in sheer ignorance of the innumerable provisions that make up the 2,700 pages of the law,” he writes.
Read the ad (click the “fullscreen” icon in the bottom right to view):
