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It's Not the 'Doctor Shortage,' Stupid (It's a Manufactured Crisis)
American Thinker ^ | 01/11/2013 | Michael Applebaum, MD

Posted on 01/11/2013 7:47:45 AM PST by SeekAndFind

Newsmax.com, on 07 January 2013, published an article entitled, "Doctor Shortage Becoming Crisis Under Obamacare."

The sick care industry is a repair and rescue industry. This so-called crisis is a manufactured one in the same way that there would be a "mechanic shortage" if the overwhelming preponderance of cars were so poorly built by intent that they required an obscene amount of repair.

The fundamental problems with the sick care system, for the most part, remain the quality of the protoplasm entering it, i.e., people are unfit by choice who therefore develop diseases of choice, and the combined efforts of the government and Progressive Medicine to nannify sick care, i.e., save people from themselves without allowing them the golden opportunity to truly experience the results of their behavior.

The responsible among us are forced to underwrite this last endeavor.

This is an example of the moral hazard attendant to "health insurance" and its encouragement.

Real insurance, not the pseudo-insurance of the Progressive State, works to decrease risk. Private industry creates incentives to this end.

Government and the sick care industry have no such goal. For the former, the slop in the trough from which it feeds (money separated under threat of force from some citizens) never goes dry. For the latter, it is the only game in town to receive government's aqua vitae, i.e., protection money. Cha-ching.

(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: doctor; healthcare; obamacare; shortage

1 posted on 01/11/2013 7:47:52 AM PST by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind
Government and the sick care industry have no such goal.

Yes it does they just have another tactic in mind to deal with it. They plan on banning anything they decide is unhealthy. Naturally it will fail but when has lack of merit ever stopped a gooberment program?

2 posted on 01/11/2013 7:56:17 AM PST by TigersEye (Who is John Galt?)
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To: SeekAndFind

Sounds like he’s blaming the victim. And, no, I don’t want to be told what and how much to eat like I’m some sort of lab rat.


3 posted on 01/11/2013 8:00:24 AM PST by OrangeHoof (Our economy won't heal until one particular black man is unemployed.)
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To: SeekAndFind

His points are poorly articulated.

Does anyone have a clue what he is saying, except that the miracles of modern medicine are causing the gene pool to go to hell, and that people don’t take care of themselves because they know the (government and insurance company regulated) medical establishment will step in and save them (sort of)?

The first is predictable from an rudimentary understanding of biology, the second from the psychology of common sense.


4 posted on 01/11/2013 8:04:07 AM PST by dagogo redux (A whiff of primitive spirits in the air, harbingers of an impending descent into the feral.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Recently airline management is crying about a looming pilot shortage, but in fact it is in reality a shortage of pilots willing to work for minimum wage at regional airlines.

http://citizensvoice.com/news/fewer-student-pilots-more-strict-requirements-could-lead-to-a-pilot-shortage-1.1414196

http://thetruthabouttheprofession.weebly.com/professional-pilot-salaries.html


5 posted on 01/11/2013 8:06:07 AM PST by KeyLargo
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To: SeekAndFind
I can't make much sense of this article, and suspect it was published because of the MD at the end of his name.

The numbers--600k physicians in the US. 250k are over 55 yrs old and looking eagerly to cut back and retire. The whole population of doctors has changed with the influx of women who typically do not like the more physically demanding specialties and do not like long hours. The younger doctors, male and female, are not willing to endure the kind of a rigorous work their older colleagues expected.

For whatever reason, there are much less doctor "hours" available--and while I can't really follow this incoherent doctor's assertions, the shortage of physician care is coming to your town.

6 posted on 01/11/2013 8:07:35 AM PST by Mamzelle
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To: SeekAndFind

Well, well. Another liberal who doesn’t understand supply and demand.

Let the number of doctors float and soon we’d have as many clinics as quick lube shops. 2-for-1 special on bloodwork every Tuesday.

I’m optimistic - this healthcare bubble will pop, too.


7 posted on 01/11/2013 8:09:10 AM PST by Forrest
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To: SeekAndFind

I never trust anyone from an industry telling me that limiting the supply of service providers in that industry isn’t a problem.

Letting doctors decide how many doctors get trained is odious.


8 posted on 01/11/2013 8:09:41 AM PST by krb (Obama is a miserable failure.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Some 95% of the personal woe in this world is self-induced, nowhere more so than the maintenance of personal health.

Well-care and preventive strategies are so much less expensive to cover than correcting damage already done, through either ignorance, sloth or outright stupid behavior. The care and feeding of the human body has some principles already well-known, and after the age of forty, if a person is not actively participating in a personal health maintenance regimen, including diet, exercise, and careful monitoring of limits on destructive impulses, there is little hope of living out the biblical three-score and ten (70 years of age, for those of you from Rio Linda). Of course, since life expectancy is now well above that for most demographics, that speaks well of how at least certain groups have accepted the responsibilities that go with enjoyment of good health.

When a person is younger, even gross negligence of matters of health, while challenging, leaves the individual still with sufficient margins of personal vitality remaining so recovery is both quick and relatively complete. But that reserve, once squandered, is not easily recovered, and the decline may set in rather faster than otherwise. Those pounds you pack on after age forty, tend to stay all the rest of your life. And with this additional body mass, a whole syndrome of problems are included, mostly at no additional charge. High blood pressure, onset of Type II diabetes, digestive and circulatory problems, and advanced deterioration of the skeletal structure are a few among many.

Just remember the Quality Adjusted Remaining Years (QARY) is going to be the cost-benefit paradigm that will be applied in the operation of the “death panels” in Obamacare, which we are told do not exist.

Yeah, and we are supposed to believe the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy DO exist, too.

How about unicorns and pixie dust?


9 posted on 01/11/2013 8:17:39 AM PST by alloysteel (Bronco Bama - the cowboy who whooped up and widened the stampede.)
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To: krb

my hubby is a practicing physician. this guy to me sounds like a burned out general practitioner who has lost any sense of empathy for his patients

not all medical conditions needing medical attention are the result of poor patient choices and even if they are you have chosen this as your profession either treat them with compassion or get out of medicine

that being said there will be a doctor shortage when MD’s like this guy become disillusioned with medicine and people who feel entitled to have the government fork out 100 dollars so they can ask MD’s what to do about their chapped lips ( a real life example by the way) are filling waiting rooms


10 posted on 01/11/2013 8:20:26 AM PST by longfellowsmuse (last of the living nomads)
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To: SeekAndFind

“...people are unfit by choice who therefore develop diseases of choice...”

This should be fixed once obamacare is emplaced. This is where the death panels will shine, having the power to deny health care to those it deems unworthy of it. Initially, it will be the elderly, then those who are “unfit by choice,” then the very sick young, then those whose party affiliation isn’t the right one, and so on.

Leaving the state with extra money it didn’t have to waste on the sick, that they can now spend on special government programs.


11 posted on 01/11/2013 8:39:07 AM PST by DPMD
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To: Mamzelle
The author points out that much of the system is oriented toward "sick care", but your metrics tells the story. Even if our population were more health oriented, we still need checkups for our children, we break bones and cut ourselves when we're more active, and we live longer - which means we still need more doctors.

Also, whatever government touches, they distort. We have tariffs on sugar cane to appease the corn growers. So now almost everything is made with high fructose corn syrup. There's a direct correlation between consumption of HFCS and obesity / diabetes. Big gov creates ever expanding regulations and subsidies, causing prices go through the roof when costs are mandated and people are disconnected from paying for services.

So, there are demographic, government distortion, and sick care vs health care delivery reasons for a growing shortage of doctors.

12 posted on 01/11/2013 9:53:49 AM PST by uncommonsense (Conservatives believe what they see; Liberals see what they believe.)
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To: Mamzelle

Shortage is an understatement. Most of the 50+ year old docs I know are planning on cutting back. Already they get a minimal about from Medicare and patient billing gets less cost effective every day.

Why work 12-14 hour days, be on call, get reimbursed very little and then pay 50% in state and federal taxes. All those I know who have stored up a little nest egg are talking about cutting back or early retirement. If you think it’s difficult to get an appointment now, just wait.


13 posted on 01/11/2013 10:00:45 AM PST by ladyjane (For the first time in my life I am not proud of my country.)
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To: Forrest

Exactly. It is a matter of capital. Think of doctors as if they were machines. You gotta pay to maintain them, and profit off the return. The greater the profit, the more you have to form new capital. Should you suddenly stop investing in machinery you won’t buy new ones and the ones you have start to break down.

This was observed, and spectacularly so, in the totalitarian regimes of the previous century. They had the vampire economies, not the Romneys of the world. Supposed miracles of production soared by mortgaging whatever savings had been built up under earlier regimes.

Labor works the same way when high skill and extended education is involved. Doctors are expensive machines to acquire and maintain, and should there be limited prospects for remuneration less will choose to work in the field.


14 posted on 01/11/2013 10:42:55 AM PST by Tublecane
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To: alloysteel

I seem to remember Malthus, when he was busy demonstrating why poor laws never work because they encourage people at the margins to become dependent, excluding malingerers because there was presumably a limit. Dependency hopefuls wouldn’t break their own legs, presumably. Such failure of imagination. Not only did he miss how precise will become medical care and what trivial things we’ll subsidize, but also how long people will live and how after a certain age humans are like one big disease.


15 posted on 01/11/2013 10:48:41 AM PST by Tublecane
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To: krb
I never trust anyone from an industry telling me that limiting the supply of service providers in that industry isn’t a problem.

Letting doctors decide how many doctors get trained is odious.

Bingo!

The fundamental problem with American health care (or sick care) prior to the additional layer of problems created by Obamacare has always been that the services are provided by a state-created monopoly guild (the physicians) who control their own number and under state-granted monopolies called "patents" given to pharmaceutical companies and medical device manufactures. Unlike the other well-known example of state-granted monopolies, utilities, which have their rates regulated in the public interest, neither physicians nor pharmaceutical companies holding patents on the latest treatment for diseases face either effective competition or have their rates and prices regulated in the public interest.

The hiding of costs behind third-party payers, of course, contrary to what those who fancy they are getting care "for free" may think, is in fact a monopolist's dream: prices don't affect demand (which would be fairly inelastic anyway considering what is being sold), unless insurers refuse to cover things, but in that case the compliant media and leftist demagogues side with the monopolists against the "heartless insurance companies".

16 posted on 01/11/2013 10:50:33 AM PST by The_Reader_David (And when they behead your own people in the wars which are to come, then you will know...)
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To: krb
Same old, same old guild mentality.

You should have studied organic chemistry a little harder.

We are importing doctors from overseas, and the candidates have slowed!

I've been on these board ten years trying to explain to Freepers that educating a doctor, or a nurse for that matter, is a fabulously expensive undertaking. It's not like making a lawyer, which only requires a classroom and some nitwit to teach it. Think about what is required to educate a medical personnel. I'm tired of explaining it.

It may comfort you to think that it's a conspiracy of guilds, but it is frankly IDIOTIC. Oh, and Hillary shut down some medical schools because she thought a large supply of doctors made medical care expensive.

That's how a Yale-educated lawyer thinks. Go back to my explanation of how lawyers are educated...

17 posted on 01/11/2013 7:28:48 PM PST by Mamzelle
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18 posted on 01/11/2013 7:30:47 PM PST by musicman (Until I see the REAL Long Form Vault BC, he's just "PRES__ENT" Obama = Without "ID")
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To: longfellowsmuse

His writing is so incoherent, his ideas so disordered, that I’m wondering if he wrote under the influence. As for lacking empathy, the writer is also a lawyer...


19 posted on 01/11/2013 7:31:58 PM PST by Mamzelle
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