A number of interesting statistics were released recently. Of particular relevance, the Doctor Patient Medical Association surveyed 699 American doctors and found 83 percent of American physicians have considered ending their practices because of President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

This survey also found 90 percent of physicians believe “the medical system is on the wrong track,” 72 percent say the “individual insurance mandate will not result in improved access (to) care” and 70 percent say “reducing government would be the single best fix.”

Moreover, 49 percent of physicians indicated they will stop accepting Medicaid payments, and 74 percent say they will stop accepting new Medicare patients or opt out of Medicare completely.

There is certainly no unanimous support for the health care act in the medical field, and the majority of physicians question the effectiveness of the act’s individual mandate provision and government involvement in Americans’ health care in general.

In other words, repealing the Affordable Care Act is doctors’ orders.

Another recently released figure is unemployment. This figure remains at 8.2 percent — unchanged from June’s figure. There are still 12.7 million Americans unemployed. In addition, there are 8.2 million Americans who would like full-time work but only work part time, according to statistics from the Bureau of Labor.

Despite this stagnation, on Monday, Obama proposed to end the Bush tax cuts for those earning more than $250,000 a year and keep the tax cuts for everyone else. Regarding this proposal, Obama said, “Let’s not hold the vast majority of all Americans and our entire economy hostage while we debate the merits of another tax cut for the wealthy.”

But it can be argued the president and Democrats in Congress who propose hiking taxes on the “wealthy” are actually the ones holding the economy “hostage.” It does not matter that the tax hike would only apply to those earning more than $250,000 a year because any tax hike withdraws potential consumption and investment from the economy.

Hiking taxes on the rich would hurt the vast majority of Americans, even though the vast majority of Americans would not see a tax increase. This is because hiking taxes on the rich would hurt the economy as a whole. Because the president and some Democrats in Congress are proposing this tax hike, they are the true hostage takers.

The final figure comes from a poll by The Hill that asks, “Has President Obama changed America for better or for worse?” The results say that 56 percent of likely voters answered “worse,” and only 35 percent answered “better.” If we are lucky, this means most Americans can see through class warfare.

Michael Stikkel is a junior computer engineering major. His column appears online weekly. He can be reached at mcstikke@syr.edu.

Published on July 12, 2012 at 2:21 pm