The federal government thwarted a promising cancer treatment. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) put Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski on trial twice, saying “it did not matter” whether his “unconventional cancer treatments saved people’s lives,” only “that he had failed to get the FDA’s permission first.” But as Reason’s Jacob Sullum notes, the Phase II clinical trials that the FDA belatedly carried out “under congressional pressure have supported what the teary testimonials of patients and their families suggested: Although Burzynski’s antineoplastons are far from a cure-all, they seem to be more effective, and are certainly much less devastating in their side effects, than radiation and chemotherapy for certain deadly, intractable cancers.”

The government is also thwarting the production of life-saving drugs, causing critical shortages of key medicines. The supply of an essential cancer drug may run out within weeks: “A crucial medicine to treat childhood leukemia is in such short supply that hospitals across the country may exhaust their stores within the next two weeks, leaving hundreds and perhaps thousands of children at risk of dying from a largely curable disease, federal officials and cancer doctors say.” As a commenter quoted by law professor Glenn Reynolds points out, this is the result of government price controls: “So price controls are imposed on injectable drugs and lo and behold a shortage arises. Who would have thunk it?” As a doctor notes, this drug shortage is far from unique: “these shortages are very real… one center I work at has trouble getting propofol for anesthesia and another cannot get zofran (ondansetron), one of the most effective anti-nausea drugs on the market.” As another commentator notes, the “government has distorted the market and removed incentives for the production of life-saving drugs.”

The Obama administration has also sought to sharply restrict the market for bone-marrow transplants, potentially costing thousands of lives. It recently asked a federal appeals court to extend the reach of the National Organ Transplant Act beyond its text, in order to ban compensation for the collection of peripheral blood stem cells needed by many transplant recipients.  By doing so, it hopes to prevent organ transplants from being affected by “market forces.”

The federal DEA recently caused shortages of the drug Adderall, which is needed by people suffering from narcolepsy. Earlier, government regulations caused cancer and burn victims in the Third World to die in agony without any pain relief.  More links on the federal government’s role in causing shortages of hospital drugs can be found here.

Have a listen here.

Fellow in Consumer Policy Studies Michelle Minton breaks down the FDA’s behind-the-scenes push to regulate dietary supplements nearly as strictly as prescription drugs.

Only in Bizarro World can you claim someone is your attorney — and thus shielded by attorney work-product privilege — and then insist in the very next breath that they never represented you. But that is what the Obama administration and Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan are doing. The Obama administration refuses to release its communications with Kagan about health care litigation back when she was the administration’s Solicitor General, on the grounds that they are covered by attorney work-product protection. Yet, contradictorily, it and Kagan insist that she never acted as the administration’s lawyer in the matter, and thus doesn’t need to recuse herself from hearing the constitutional challenges to Obamacare that will be decided by the Supreme Court this year.

Law Professor Ronald Rotunda, the co-author of a leading constitutional law treatise, says that Kagan should have recused herself from hearing the case based on the federal statute, 28 U.S.C. 455(b)(3), that forbids former government attorneys like Kagan from being involved in cases they earlier were consulted on, and the Judicial Conference’s ethical guidance for federal judges. As he notes:

[Commentators have been] calling on Justice Elena Kagan to disqualify herself in the ObamaCare litigation because of her role, as Solicitor General, in preparing its constitutional defense. These calls have intensified with the release of recent emails. Justice Kagan’s supporters respond that she testified in her confirmation hearings that she had nothing to do with ObamaCare

First, her phraseology was much more precise. She said she would only recuse herself from any case in which she “officially formally approved something,” or “served as counsel of record” or “played any substantial role.” But the statute requires disqualification if Kagan, as a federal employee (she was the former Solicitor General) “participated” as an “adviser” on a matter, even if she did not give any formal advice. She also must disqualify herself if her impartiality might reasonably be questioned.

In response to a Freedom of Information (FOIA) request, the Obama Administration has turned over some emails but it refuses to turn over many others because, it says, these emails are “protected by the attorney work product doctrine.” That doctrine, the DOJ affidavit explains, covers discussion by “OSG” (Office of Solicitor General) lawyers about “legal issues, arguments, and strategy concerning anticipated” litigation over ObamaCare. So, the DOJ is simultaneously claiming that it completely walled off Kagan from any discussions involving the constitutional defense of ObamaCare, while admitting that Kagan was participating in emails discussing “legal issues, arguments, and strategy concerning” the anticipated ObamaCare litigation.

In March of 2010, there are a series of emails to or from Kagan; the subject line of all of them is “Health care litigation meeting.” The DOJ refused to disclose these emails because they discuss legal arguments for the “expected [health care] litigation.” If Kagan hermetically sealed herself from discussions on shaping defenses for ObamaCare litigation, why is she repeatedly sending and receiving emails shaping defenses for ObamaCare litigation? The Government refuses to release these emails, on grounds of a litigation privilege, while claiming that it erected such a solid wall around Kagan that she never would send or receive such emails. This wall must have more holes than Swiss cheese. If we can read theses emails, we will learn if the legal theory developed in those meetings is the legal theory that Kagan adopts when she rules on the case.

A week after the president announced her nomination to the Supreme Court, a DOJ press officer emailed the Deputy Solicitor General and asked if Kagan had been involved in the preparations for health care litigation. Notwithstanding these earlier emails, he responded, a minute later: “No she never has been involved in any of it. I’ve run it for the Office, and have never discussed the issues with her one bit.” A few minutes later, he forwarded that email to Kagan.

One would think, if Kagan’s Deputy was correct, that Kagan would simply say, “of course,” or, perhaps nothing. But that is not what happened. Less than two minutes later, Kagan wrote: “This needs to be coordinated. Tracy [the DOJ press officer], you should not say anything about this before talking to me.” What is there to “coordinate”? Why would Kagan suggest that they have to get their stories straight? And why “talk” instead of using emails (which leave a paper trail)?

The Judicial Conference of the United States publishes a Compendium of Selected Opinions, to guide federal judges on ethical issues. One section deals with “prior government employment.” The typical fact scenario is a government employee (often a U.S. Attorney) who becomes a judge. Several pages summarizing prior ethics opinions all say the same thing: if the U.S. Attorney was personally involved in a pending or impending matter, she must disqualify herself, and the parties cannot waive that disqualification; if she was not personally involved, but the impending matter was in her office (under her responsibility), she must disqualify herself, unless the parties waive the disqualification.

At the very least, Kagan must disqualify herself because her office was involved with the prospective ObamaCare litigation. . .

Justice Kagan should also follow Supreme Court precedent on this issue. In Schneiderman v. United States (1943). Justice Jackson refused to participate because the case began in 1939, he became Attorney General in 1940, and thus he “succeeded to official responsibility for it.”

While liberal justices like Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg have attracted no criticism, and no calls for their recusal, despite routinely appearing before, and being honored by, liberal groups like the National Women’s Law Center that fervently support the 2010 health care law and depict it as remedying a grave “moral and social wrong” akin to segregation, the more conservative justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas have been attacked by liberal journalists for attending a Federalist Society event, even though the Federalist Society took no formal position on Obamacare. The liberal journalists claim that they should not have attended this event because tables at the event were purchased by law firms involved in challenging Obamacare in court. But tables at the event were also purchased by law firms that filed briefs supporting Obamacare in court, meaning that the law firms whose attorneys attended this event were on both sides of the issue; and in any event, the mere purchase of tables at an event by law firms with a point of view about the health care law “did not violate any applicable ethics rules,” and does not require recusal by a justice who attends or speaks at such an event  So it is clear that Justices Scalia and Thomas have no obligation to recuse themselves.

Former Supreme Court clerk Carrie Severino makes the case for Kagan’s recusal at greater length here.  Former Justice Department lawyer Ed Whelan discusses the serious nature of the recusal issue here. Another former Justice Department lawyer gives additional reasons why Kagan may be ethically obligated to recuse herself here.

In a follow-up post,  Severino notes that even if Kagan had not advised on, or been consulted, about legal challenges to Obamacare, she might still be obligated to recuse herself, since “precedent in three federal circuits suggests that Kagan ought to recuse herself merely by virtue of being head of the Solicitor General’s office while her office worked on the case. Under that test, even if she never knew the case was being addressed, she’d still need to recuse as a justice.” This is an additional, alternative reason why Justice Kagan should recuse herself from hearing the Supreme Court cases involving the health care law (such as National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius and Florida v. Department of Health and Human Services).

Putting aside the constitutional issues, Obamacare has also attracted criticism for harming the health care system and reducing employment. The Dean of Harvard Medical School, Jeffrey Flier, argued that Obamacare will harm life-saving medical innovation. The 2010 health care law has also been criticized by the Associated Press and others for breaking a number of campaign promises that the president made in 2008.

Proponents of government collective bargaining view it as a fundamental human right. The shameful actions of SEIU in Michigan, however, undermine this claim.

In 2005, Michigan lawmakers signed off to create the Michigan Quality Community Care Council (MQC3). MQC3 maintains a registry of homecare providers to assist Medicaid recipients looking for a caregiver. In reality, the primary function of MQC3 was to make 45,000 private homecare providers government employees and dues-paying union members.

In 2006, SEIU took advantage of Michigan law deeming homecare providers government employees. To gain exclusive representation SEIU organized a covert union campaign. The stealth-organizing tactic led to 20 percent voter turnout and SEIU won a landslide victory.

Soon thereafter, SEIU obtained a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with the state. The events following the CBA expose the dangers of government union political influence and permanence of CBAs.

MQC3, acting as a “dummy” employer for homecare workers, created a mechanism for union dues to be siphoned off Medicaid checks. Not only is it illegal to unionize homecare workers who are private contractors, homecare workers already have employers: their Medicaid beneficiaries. Worse, the scheme wholly rejects the purpose of Medicaid by diverting funds from individuals who cannot afford medical care to Big Labor.

Since 2006, SEIU collected nearly $6 million a year and $28 million total (and counting) in union dues from Medicaid payments to homecare providers. The Mackinac Center broke the news and filed suit to stop the forced unionization and dues payments of homecare workers.

Once Michigan lawmakers became aware of SEIU’s exploitation, they took action to stop it. Gov. Rick Snyder eliminated MQC3 funding in the FY 2012 budget and planned to close the program on September 30, 2011. State Rep. Paul Opsommer (R) introduced H.B. 4003, banning stealth unionization of private contractors and forced union dues payments of homecare workers, which passed House.

Apparently, laws that protect low-income individuals with health problems are unpopular in Michigan. Union-friendly state lawmakers worked behind the scenes to stall H.B. 4003 in the Senate and to maintain union funding from MQC3. Their efforts included State Senator Roger Kahn (R) conducting a meeting with SEIU officials to preserve their forced dues collection. Sen. Kahn’s first notes of the meeting read. “SEIU is concerned re: moving forward w/ funding QC3. Gent. Agreement to find $.”

Sadly, SEIU’s collective bargaining power made their political influence superfluous. The binding powers of CBAs allow SEIU to continue collecting union dues until the contract expires on November 15, 2012.

Mackinac Center Legal Foundation Director Patrick Wright explains the devastating effects of union political influence combined with government collective bargaining power, “The amazing resilience of MQC3 indicates that legislation is going to be required to ultimately end the government employee unions’ practice of diverting money from the state’s most needy citizens to fill their own coffers.”

All attempts to protect those in need and taxpayers (by way of lawsuits, reform, and defunding) from corruption have failed. Big Labor’s ability to convince legislators to set up dummy agencies enabling unions to steal from taxpayers is so strong that repealing government union collective bargaining power is the only way to end all such heinous behavior.

However, one legal maneuver may be left to stop illegal forced-dues payments and to recover taxpayer funds in Michigan. Medicaid receives funding from federal and state governments, opening the door for filing “false claims” charges in both state and federal courts to recover taxpayer funds. False claims are taxpayers’ most powerful tool to recover stolen government funds.

On the federal level, the False Claims Act, 31 U.S.C. §§ 3729-3733, allows taxpayers to recoup losses from any person or entity that “knowingly presents, or causes to be presented, a false or fraudulent claim for payment or approval.”

In Michigan, the Medicaid False Claims Act, Act 72 of 1977, directs the state “to prohibit fraud in the obtaining of benefits or payments in connection with the medical assistance program; to prohibit kickbacks or bribes in connection with the program.” Violations of the Medicaid False Claims Act involve “making a claim or causing a claim to be made under the social welfare act that contains a statement of fact or that fails to reveal a fact, which statement or failure leads the department to believe the represented or suggested state of affair to be other than it actually is.”

The creation of MQC3 was fraudulent, exposed as political payback from e-mails obtained by the Mackinac Center. Additionally, proposals creating MQC3 failed to reveal the fact that union dues would be taken out of Medicaid payments.

Government union collective bargaining power allows Big Labor to steal from the needy and increase the costs of providing public services. Removing collective bargaining power from government unions would diminish their political influence and reduce false claims and fraud.

69% of physicians are “pessimistic about the future of medicine” because of the 2010 healthcare law, notes Dr. Marc Siegel in USA Today. “Just 13% of those surveyed backed the Affordable Care Act.”  “When surveyed by” the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions, “83% of doctors said one likely change to the medical system as a result of the law would be increased wait times.”  “73% said it would not reduce costs.” “The concern of doctors is reflected among the American people: Support for the law has sunk to 29% in the latest Associated Press poll.”

Obamacare is full of pork, special-interest favors, and political payoffs and mischief. Health policy analyst Michael Cannon writes about how an obscure provision of the health care law discriminates in favor of hospitals in one state — Massachusetts — at the expense of hospitals in all other states.

Earlier, CEI filed an amicus brief challenging unconstitutional provisions of the health care law on behalf of the leaders of the Minnesota and North Carolina legislatures. More recently, it helped file a brief with the Supreme Court on the issue of whether Obamacare’s unconstitutional individual-mandate is severable from the rest of the health care law.

Obamacare is causing layoffs in the medical device industry. Obamacare will raise the cost of insurance by a massive 55-85 percent in Ohio, according to one study. It will harm life-saving medical innovation, concluded the Harvard Medical School Dean and others. It taxes medical devices and cosmetic surgery, and raises taxes starting in 2013 on investors. Obamacare also breaks many campaign promises, and increases state budget deficits.

In December, a federal appeals court ruled in Flynn v. Holder that the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984 (NOTA) does not forbid compensation for the majority of “bone marrow donors.” That was great news for patients needing bone marrow transplants: As CEI’s Greg Conko noted earlier, the court’s ruling clarified that it is legal for approximately 70 percent of donors to be paid for their life-saving contribution, compensation that is essential because around 3,000 Americans die every year waiting for a marrow transplant because an appropriate match cannot be found. Only compensation provides an incentive for additional donors to come forward and contribute their life-saving cells.

I put “bone marrow donors” in quotes, because the majority of “marrow donations” are not actually donations of marrow at all. Instead, peripheral blood stem cells are isolated from circulating blood, and those stem cells develop into bone marrow in the new patient. That procedure is not covered by the plain language of the NOTA statute, which only bans sales of organs and organ parts, not blood parts.

Now, the Obama administration is asking the appeals court to vacate its ruling allowing donors to be compensated, and to rehear the case en banc. It argues that whatever the text of the NOTA statute may say, its reach should be judicially extended beyond organs to peripheral blood stem cells, in order to guard against the evil of “market forces”:

The Obama administration has asked a federal appeals court to reconsider its decision last month to allow compensation to people donating bone marrow cells harvested from their bloodstreams.

In a petition for rehearing by the full U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. argued that the court ignored the intent of Congress to shield all organ sales from “market forces” when a three-judge panel ruled unanimously on Dec. 1 that marrow cells collected from blood aren’t covered by the 1984 National Organ Transplant Act.

But there is no legal prohibition against “market forces” as applied to human cells, however much the Obama administration may hate “market forces.” Everyone acknowledges that it is perfectly legal to pay for human blood, semen, and ova donations, which NOTA does not treat as  organs. The Institute for Justice cogently argued that peripheral blood stem cells are more analogous to donating blood than bone marrow. And the Ninth Circuit agreed. For purposes of the Act, the appeals court concluded, peripheral blood stem cells should be considered blood parts, not organ parts. It “said bone marrow cells filtered from the donor’s bloodstream were blood parts, which can be sold legally, not organ parts covered by the 1984 ban. That law was enacted when bone marrow donation involved a surgical extraction through needles inserted into the spongy marrow in hip bones — a painful procedure legislators feared would be disproportionately endured by the poor if financial inducement were allowed.”

In short, the Obama administration’s position goes beyond the text and the policy rationale for NOTA’s ban on organ donations.

As the president of the Save Lives Now New York Foundation notes, there is a compelling public-policy argument for compensating bone-marrow donors:

The population of the United States will have to consider financial incentives for organ donation because there are not enough organs from deceased patients. Last year an estimated 13,000 patients died from brain death and only 8,000 families said yes to donation. Even if all 13,000 families said yes there would have only been 39,000 transplants (about 3 organs recovered per donor). The waiting list was 110,370 which means that even if all brain dead patients were to be donors, there would have been 70,000+ patients not getting a transplant. These patients are either on dialysis (renal patients) or they are dying. Therefore the medical community has to look to living donors for the needed organs. Almost every living donor is doing so because a mother, father, brother, sister, son or daughter needs a transplant. That’s understandable – love of family motivates them. Last year these family members totaled 6,565. So where will we get the remaining 65,000 donors? There has to be an incentive to encourage strangers to donate. Why should they forego three or four weeks worth of pay checks and be out of pocket for their travel, food, lodging and miscellaneous unreimbursed expenses related to living donation?

Altruism hasn’t EVER covered the need for organ donation – since 1988 when OPTN/UNOS started collecting statistics on this. In the first year (1988) there were 5,000 patients who didn’t get a transplant because of a lack of organs available. In 2010 there were 81,000 who didn’t get on. We have to come up with some appropriate financial incentives to motivate living donors to come forward.

Earlier, kidney donor Alexander Berger made the case for allowing compensation of kidney donors, as a way of saving thousands of lives. Allowing the sale of blood parts, like peripheral stem cells, is obviously an easier thing to justify than organ sales, but many commentators, like law professor Ilya Somin, have argued that organ sales should be legal as well to save lives.

Sick people, like those suffering from narcolepsy, are suffering from a manufacturing shortage of Adderall. That shortage was caused by the Drug Enforcement Agency, which controls and limits the supply of Adderall’s ingredients.

Denying the obvious, the DEA falsely claims that there is no shortage, and that if there is one, it’s because manufacturers don’t want to make more of the drug, despite the fact that there is plenty of market for the drug:

To manage controlled substances that can potentially be abused, the DEA sets manufacturing quotas for drug ingredients each year to control supplies like Adderall. But Adderall drug manufacturers . . . say they cannot meet the growing demand for the product without looser limits from the DEA. The DEA questions whether there is actually a shortage of generic supplies, which are at an especially low supply . . . Despite the growing demand, Special Agent Gary Boggs of the DEA’s office of diversion control told the New York Times, “We believe there is plenty of supply.” Barbara Carreno, a DEA spokeswoman, told Reuters that . . .“Any shortage of these products is therefore a result of decisions made by industry regarding manufacturing or distribution,” Carreno told Reuters. But a Teva spokesperson told Reuters, “Our production facilities are currently running at maximum capacity for Adderall utilizing all available API (the drug’s active pharmaceutical ingredient). The catalyst for the problem is the quota system, not the business.”

So as Rob Port notes, “the DEA is limiting the supply of ingredients for a perfectly legal drug (when prescribed properly) which treats and alleviates a lot of suffering among Americans in order to fight the war on drugs.”

Greece is rapidly degenerating into third-world status. The UK’s Daily Mail reports:

Youngsters are being dumped by their parents who are struggling to make ends meet in what is fast becoming the most tragic human consequence of the Euro crisis. It comes as pharmacists revealed the country had almost run out of aspirin, as multi-billion euro austerity measures filter their way through society.

If you only read this much of the article, you would assume that the country’s “austerity measures” are responsible for the medicine shortage, but if you’ve ever opened an economics textbook, you’d know this can’t be the case. Shortages occur when prices aren’t able to readjust to higher demand. Why aren’t prices able to adjust? Keep reading.

Further evidence of Greeks feeling the pinch of austerity measures is the lack of aspirin and other medicines now available in the country.

Actually, that’s more inaccurate information. Keep reading further.

Pharmacists are struggling to stock their shelves as the Greek government, which sets the prices for drugs, keeps them artificially low. This means that firms are turning to sell the drugs outside of the country for a higher price – leading to stock depletion for Greeks. Mina Mavrou, who runs one of the country’s 12,000 pharmacies, said she spent hours each day pleading with drug makers, wholesalers and colleagues to hunt down medicines for clients. And she said that even when drugs were available, pharmacists often must foot the bill up front, or patients simply do without.

Finally, the Daily Mail gets to the actual cause after repeatedly stating the wrong cause. Shortages can happen anywhere the government fixes prices — or artificially restricts supply. Shortages are not a third world problem or a first world problem — they’re a government problem.

Ramesh Ponnuru writes about the layoffs and lost jobs resulting from Obamacare’s new tax on medical devices at Bloomberg News:

A year from now, the federal government will start collecting a new tax on medical devices from tongue depressors to imaging machines, thanks to the sweeping health-care overhaul that Democrats enacted in the spring of 2010. People in the industry say it’s already having an effect.

In November, citing the new tax, Stryker Corp. (SYK), whose products include artificial hips and knees, announced that it would let go about 1,000 of its workers. Earlier last year, Covidien Plc (COV), maker of surgical instruments, said it would lay off 200 workers in the U.S. and move production to Costa Rica and Mexico. It, too, cited the tax.

Other companies in the field have announced similar measures — or plans to expand production overseas but not in the U.S. — without mentioning the tax. The sluggish economy is clearly part of the explanation, but the medical-devices industry had been a relative bright spot within U.S. manufacturing, losing only 1.1 percent of its employees during 2007-2008 while manufacturing as a whole lost 4.8 percent. A study done for AdvaMed, a trade association for the industry, claims the tax could ultimately cost more than 45,000 jobs.

Medical-device companies employ more than 400,000 Americans. Their wages are higher than the national average. The U.S. is a net exporter of medical devices.

The tax will change these numbers for the worse. It will be levied at 2.3 percent of sales; on average, profits make up less than 4 percent of sales in the industry. The AdvaMed study concludes, “The new 2.3 percent excise tax will roughly double their total tax bill and raise the average effective corporate income tax rate to one of the highest effective tax rates faced by any industry in the world.” . . .Richard S. Foster, the Medicare chief actuary, has estimated that if the tax is passed on to consumers it will raise national-health costs by $18.2 billion in 2018.

Earlier, restaurant chain CEO Andrew Puzder explained how the 2010 health care law is preventing jobs from being created in the restaurant industry, and resulting in layoffs in other industries. Fox News’ John Stossel reported on how Obamacare is stopping businesses from hiring, and interviewed affected business owners.

Ponnuru says that Obamacare’s medical-device tax will harm medical “innovation,” noting industry predictions that it will lead to “reduced research and development.” His conclusion is consistent with the opinions of the Dean of Harvard Medical School and Cato health policy analyst Michael Cannon, who likewise say that Obamacare will harm life-saving medical innovation. Obamacare taxes not just medical devices but also cosmetic surgery, and raises taxes on investors starting in 2013. Obamacare also breaks many campaign promises. Obamacare’s tax increases reflect an overall hostility to business that worries even liberal businessmen: Democratic businessman Steve Wynn called Obama “the greatest wet blanket to business and progress and job creation in my lifetime.”

At Bloomberg News, Andrew Puzder, CEO of CKE Restaurants, Inc., explains how the 2010 healthcare law is preventing jobs from being created and resulting in layoffs.

For example, Puzder notes, CKE Restaurants, which operates Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. restaurants, “will have to cut spending on new restaurant construction,” in order to “offset higher health-care expenses,” even though “building new restaurants is how” the company creates jobs.  Puzder argues that the increase in the company’s healthcare costs will “more than consume” the amount it ”spent on new restaurant construction last year, leaving nothing for growth.”  It “will also need to reduce” its “capital spending,” even though such spending creates jobs and enables the restaurant company to improve its infrastructure and maintain its business. Thus, its “ability to create new jobs could vanish.”

Puzder also points to the similar situation of “Grady Payne, chief executive officer of Connor Industries Inc., a supplier of cut lumber and assembled wood products” with 450 employees, who has laid out the unpleasant options facing “his company under the health-care law, each of which would cost $1 million or more,”  which is “‘more than the company makes.’ [Payne] concluded that his company’s goals have turned “from ‘hire-and-grow’ to ‘cut-and- survive.’”

Puzder also documents the complaints of Victoria Braden, the president and CEO of Braden Benefits Strategies Inc., “a corporate employee-benefits adviser”:

“[Braden] said adoption of the law led to immediate job cuts at her company as she scaled back an expansion into a new line of business. Obamacare ‘is devastating to my business, expensive for me and my clients to administer, and works against our goals of helping businesses to expand, and putting people back to work,’ she said.”

Earlier, John Stossel of Fox News reported on how Obamacare is stopping businesses from hiring, and interviewed affected business owners on his TV show.

Obamacare will reduce the number of people employed in the U.S. by around 800,000, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Obamacare will raise the cost of insurance by a massive 55-85 percent in Ohio, according to one study.  It will harm life-saving medical innovation, concluded the Harvard Medical School Dean and others. It taxes medical devices and cosmetic surgery, and raises taxes starting in 2013 on investors. Obamacare also breaks many campaign promises, and increases state budget deficits.  Even liberal businessmen are increasingly worried about the growing cost of big government and expanding bureaucratic red tape: Democratic businessman Steve Wynn called Obama “the greatest wet blanket to business and progress and job creation in my lifetime.”