Black Ribbon Project

This ribbon is to raise awareness of the recent damage our government has caused to health care freedom and the integrity of the doctor-patient relationship. Under the new laws (PPACA), physicians will be compelled to base their advice and treatment on politically determined goals, even when in conflict with the best interest of their individual patients.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, signed into law on March 23, 2010, legalizes multiple infringements upo our rights to life, liberty and property. The government has been given wide and arbitrary powers to regulate, restrict and control not only the health insurance industry, but the provision of health care itself.

Employers and employees are no longer free to negotiate their own compensation packages but must fulfill the governments mandates for health insurance benefits.

Our most productive citizens and businesses will have a greater portion of their assets taxed away by the government to pay for increased entitlements---leaving investors and entrepreneurs with less money to expand employment, or create new businesses, or take risks on innovation.

The combination of guaranteed issue and community rating makes true health insurance illegal.

The harmful incentive system of third party payment is further entrenched and expanded, guaranteeing health care expenditures to spiral upward while simultaneously divorcing costs from efficiency-creating market competition.

Expansion of government's role in health care will eventually lead to price controls and rationing throughout of all health care--instead of existing primarily in Medicare and Medicaid as it is now.

Controlling costs must include controlling expenditures--which means that the government will have an increasing say in the medical decisions which previously have been left to a patient and his doctor.

Some individuals will benefit from this new law, and will do so in obvious ways. Many more people will suffer, but in ways that although directly traceable to this law are not obvious.

The purpose of the Black Ribbon Project is to call attention to the multiple ways that the new law undermines our freedom, erodes our prosperity and prospects for economic progress, and interjects politics into the private and intensely personal decisions which properly belong to physicians and patients.

We are now accepting contributions to distribute black ribbons accompanied by a caduceus pin to symbolize the destruction of health care freedom and the political undermining of the integrity of the doctor-patient relationship.

To kick off this project, the ribbons and pins will be distributed on April 15th at a Tea Party in San Jose, California along with a request for a minimum donation of $5.00 for one pin, $10.00 for three--and more discounting for larger orders. Each pin will be accompanied with a business card explaining the meaning of the symbol. On the back, will be contact information for the following organizations:

Freedom and Individual Rights In Medicine
Americans for Free Choice in Medicine
Patient Power
Lucidicus Project

This project is just starting out. Comments, suggestions, offers of help are welcome!!

Update 4/10/10: The project explanation has been expanded. Also, I have slightly increased amount of donation requested in order for the project to be self-sustaining. Straight donations are very welcome and will allow us to increase outreach and distribute more information with the pins.