[grumpygresh]

I have stopped taking new Medicare patients and I have released most of my Medicare patients. However, because I am in an independent physician network that requires all providers to be enrolled in Medicare, I must still must technically continue as a Medicare provider.
Medicare soon will impose electronic records costs and compliance is costly. But the really bad thing about Medicare is the regulatory environment which basically adopts the Stalinist maxim “ Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime”
Eventually, as is being proposed in MA, providers will be ‘forced’ to accept government insured patients as a condition of licensure. Of course, this is ludicrous as most medicine is elective, and physicians will do little for patients when they are being subjected to governemnt coercion. There is another Soviet maxim for this situation: “You pretend to pay and we’ll pretend to work”.
I would recommend that people read ‘Cancer Ward’ by Aleksander Solzhenitsyn to get a real insight into socialized medicine.

[TigersEye]

You would know better than I do but even before this was signed into law it has been my opinion that, if implemented, 0bamaCare will utterly destroy modern medicine.

[Magic Fingers]

“I have stopped taking new Medicare patients and I have released most of my Medicare patients. However, because I am in an independent physician network that requires all providers to be enrolled in Medicare, I must still must technically continue as a Medicare provider.”

Won’t your network (or the govt) require you to take Medicare patients if you’re technically a Medicare provider?

[BatGuano]

Thanks Grumpy. One of the many great things about FR is that posts, like yours, invite one to explore recommended reading. I just ordered both “Cancer Ward” and “Gulag Archipelago” for a greater insight into the evil empire. I have not read Solzhenitsyn and look forward to doing so.