Slate: If Doctors Boycott Obamacare, Squeeze Their Pay

The reality of the insatiable liberal desire for control and need to punish those who refuse to play the statist game is on full display in a recent Slate class-envy piece, “Doctors Fire Up the Obamacare Waaambulance,” by Matthew Yglesias.

Fully acknowledging the reality that doctors will be paid (far) less under Obamacare and, thus, will reject the system in droves, Yglesias tries to assuage his liberal readers’ fears by presenting the perfect punishment for the miserly, self-serving M.D. class: Use the Obamacare leviathan and regulations to “reduce doctors’ payment rates elsewhere in the system.” Here’s the key passage:

Medical doctors are highly paid professionals. They earn more money—a lot more money—than your average American. What's more, American doctors get paid more than doctors in any other country. Given how much of health care is financed either directly (Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans Affairs, public-sector workers) or indirectly (tax subsidy for employer-provided insurance) by the federal government, it's natural to make restraining doctors' income part of any program for making health care more affordable. So when you read stories about doctors whining that Affordable Care Act exchange plans don't pay them enough, please throw up a little in your mouth and proceed to ignore the doctors' complaints. The only practical reason to worry about low compensation for doctors in the ACA exchanges is it may cause them to boycott exchange patients. If that happens, the solution is to reduce doctors' payment rates elsewhere in the system. If we ever reach the point where American doctors have been squeezed so badly that they start fleeing north of the border to get higher pay in Canada, then we've squeezed too hard. Until that happens, forget about it.

One positive about the destructive rollout of Obamacare: It's giving America a hard look at the rank underbelly of the radical left.

The best solution is if 100% of doctors and hospitals leave ALL insurance (including Medicare) and set up a pure free market for all medical care. Patients could opt out of all employer sponsored insurance, set up their own HSA’s (pre-tax) and buy whatever extra insurance they want on an interstate free market. Insurance would reimburse the patients directly after they submit the claims for their medical care. Remove the middleman as much as possible and watch the prices fall. The GOP should be touting this plan, as it’s very simple to explain. Tort reform, a tougher goal, would be a long term objective.

ObamaCare is all about money, control, and votes. It has nothing to do with doctors and patients.

Money: The only entities that make out are Big Government and insurance companies (although nationalization of the insurers is coming down the road).

Control: Obamacare has suffocated business and individuals with all of it’s onorous regulations. Look at how the individual mandate is destroying individuals policies (how many millions have lost health care in the last ~60 days). Wait till the employer mandate goes into effect. Many small businesses are going out of business and larger businesses are leaving jobs unfilled. Obamacare is a job killer. Since the White House controls the Census and the Department of Labor, no one can trust the jobs numbers any more, and you will never know the true damage Obamacare is doing to the labor market.

Votes: Obamacare is creating a whole new class of people who actually get thru the signup process. It’s going to be the largest expansion of medicaid in history. The fines will eventually drag everyone without health care into the system.

It’s not just malpractice insurance. In England, for example, the gov’t owns the hospitals and provides the office space for physicians, and these costs of operation are regulated. In the US, doctors and hospitals are responsible for their own costs of operation subject to the market, but yet must function under reimbursement controls that put them essentially as functionaries of the federal gov’t. Thus, the federal gov’t gets the best of both worlds: they are getting de facto employees without having to take any responsibility for them.
I am not advocating total nationalization, but simply pointing out that the present arrangement is trending towards fascism.

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.