Posted on 05/12/2009 5:10:11 AM PDT by reaganaut1
At the heart of President Barack Obama's health-care plan is an insurance program funded by taxpayers, administered by Washington, and open to everyone. Modeled on Medicare, this "public option" will soon become the single dominant health plan, which is its political purpose. It will restructure the practice of medicine in the process.
Republicans and Democrats agree that the government's Medicare scheme for compensating doctors is deeply flawed. Yet Mr. Obama's plan for a centrally managed government insurance program exacerbates Medicare's problems by redistributing even more income away from lower-paid primary care providers and misaligning doctors' financial incentives.
Like Medicare, the "public option" will control spending by using its purchasing clout and political leverage to dictate low prices to doctors. (Medicare pays doctors 20% to 30% less than private plans, on average.) While the public option is meant for the uninsured, employers will realize it's easier -- and cheaper -- to move employees into the government plan than continue workplace coverage.
The Lewin Group, a health-care policy research and consulting firm, estimates that enrollment in the public option will reach 131 million people if it's open to everyone and pays Medicare rates, as many expect. Fully two-thirds of the privately insured will move out of or lose coverage. As patients shift to a lower-paying government plan, doctors' incomes will decline by as much as 15% to 20% depending on their specialty.
Physician income declines will be accompanied by regulations that will make practicing medicine more costly, creating a double whammy of lower revenue and higher practice costs, especially for primary-care doctors who generally operate busy practices and work on thinner margins. For example, doctors will face expenses to deploy pricey electronic prescribing tools and computerized health records that are mandated under the Obama plan.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
People say that malpractice insurance is only about 5% of a doctor’s costs and dismiss the issue. What they don’t say is that doctor’s order lots of tests to confirm what they already know just to cover their butts. We all pay more because of this.
Q- Is there any good reason noone is discussing the impact of Tort Law on medical costs?
A- The Trial Lawyer’s Association is one of the Dem Party’s biggest contributors.
Yes, that is the point!
Conservatives should make an issue of the impact of Trial Lawyers, not to mention Obama’s new “Duty to Die” policy, which is the result of restricted access to healthcare.
I was just about to ask how the gov’t planned on forcing doctors to take this insurance.
I guess we would end up with two levels of health care. The good doctors who only take certain insurances and those who want to make a quick buck by turning over gov’t insurance patients as quickly as they can, quality be damned.
In short - the future is a bunch of pissed off patients waiting forever to see an ever diminishing pool of pissed of doctors.
In France where there is a national “free” Health-care physicians number is quickly decreasing because they have to work a lot for a mediocre income...
And the cost of “free” public Health-care is very high and paid by high taxes...
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
I told my wife just last night that I have a very hard time trying to imagine why a young person today would want to commit to attending medical school, I think the quality of medical care in this country is about to take a nosedive.
I have not heard, read, or seen any evidence that Obama's mother was not a U.S. citizen. His father, of course, was a Kenyan. But his mother was a U.S. citizen, to my knowledge.
Please provide an authoritative link for evidence of this assertion.
Oh, and welcome to Free Republic.
What they don’t say is that doctor’s order lots of tests to confirm what they already know just to cover their butts. We all pay more because of this.
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
I am also told that, at least in my area, many “independent” testing labs are actually owned largely by the same doctors who send samples to them for testing. Isn’t this an incentive to order unneccessary testing to pad the doctor’s income?
Most likely, your doctor will start looking for another career.
I hope so.
Response to Obama's Health Care Reform:
"OOOOOOOO. BAAAAAA. MAAAAAAA...OOOOOOOO. BAAAAAA. MAAAAAAA...OOOOOOOO. BAAAAAA. MAAAAAAA..."
Routine medical care will be performed by nurse practitioners and physician assistants. The physician role will become primarily consultative. Frankly, for the most part, that will not mean a major reduction in quality.
The real "savings" of the programme will be in programmatic death.
You are so right. The healthcare costs went skyhigh when we first started seeing these multimillion dollar lawsuits.
The blame lies on the shoulders of the lawyers who got super rich (John Edwards?) from just one case. Their malpractice insurance is very costly.
I know one doctor who says it’s too expensive and too time consuming to run private practice so he just works in the ER. He has more time with his family and less stress this way.
Fortunately, the Obambi administration cannot force people to remain doctors. They will flee, wait and see.
Never underestimate the inventiveness of an evil Administration combined with a supportive legislature and compliant court system. Laws could be passed that would extend a mandatory public service requirement to any doctor who had ever taken any public funding or loan for their education, for instance. Continuing accreditation could be made conditional on meeting government standards and any doctor moving to another country could lose their US accreditation, for instance, etc. etc.
“50 million uninsured.”
When you strip away the illegals, along with those in between jobs and those wealthy enough to not seek health care insurance, the remaining estimates have shown somewhere in the 17-19m range. The libtards like to trumped that 47-50m number.
Most of the docs I know are planning to retire in the next five years. not all boomers either...just tired of the garbage.
“Most likely, your doctor will start looking for another career.”
Thereby creating severe limits on available care, and resultant rationing. Anyone with active brain cells knows this; unfortunately, too many in this country are enamoured by the idea of “free” stuff.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.