Obamacare: The Price of Socialized Medicine

The big news in the public health field in the U.S. is Obamacare. In response to its passing, Master of Public Health.org created The Price of Socialized Medicine: Obamacare’s Unconstitutionality by the Numbers infographic to give insight into how it will affect everyone.

The Supreme Court yesterday upheld the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, in a landmark 5-4 decision. Unfortunately, they got it wrong. The PPACA, known colloquially as Obamacare, should have been struck down by the high court, as it is both unconstitutional and very costly:

Individual Mandate: Obamacare requires that all Americans carry health insurance or face an annual penalty. The federal government is effectively compelling individual citizens to enter a market, which is a clear violation of the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. The Supreme Court ruled that this was constitutionally valid as within Congress’ taxing power.Medicaid Expansion: As the original Act is written, the PPACA would require states to expand Medicaid support or risk having their entire Medicaid federal funding cut off. This infringes on states’ rights. Fortunately, the Supreme Court did rule against these sanctions.

In response to the ruling, we have produced an infographic titled, “The Cost of Socialized Medicine: Obamacare’s Unconstitutionality by the Numbers”, which illustrates the folly of the PPACA as well as some of the costs that will be borne as a result.

Obviously, this design is promoting a specific opinion, but we’re here to discuss the infographic design itself.

• The design outlines a really good step-by-step story top-to-bottom, and summarizes the data behind their point of view clearly

• Good mix of illustrations and data visualization within each section.

• In general, there’s WAY too much text in the design. They want to be thorough in their explanations, but this much text will turn away many readers from reading the infographic at all. Also, most of the text is too small to read on their landing page. Less text would have been more effective, and allowed for a larger font.

• The timeline looks like events along the heartbeat axis, but they aren’t spaced out appropriately to match their dates.

• I like the icon representation of the justices. Just enough detail to be recognizable.

• Clear, easy to understand map of the costs to each state in the country map

• The sizes of the circles in the Cost of Obamacare section are close, but not quite accurately representing the dollar figures shown. Some are larger than they should be, and a couple are smaller. Almost like the sizes were eye-balled instead of calculated mathematically. Odd.

• The states that have filed lawsuits would be easier to understand if the colored states were still placed within the map of the U.S.

• Good list of sources

• Need a copyright statement and the URL to the original infographic landing page for readers that find the infographic posted on the Internet to be able to find the original.

Thanks to Jimmy for sending in the link!