I’ve never understood why doctors did not more aggressively oppose government takeover of medicine.
If the government controls medicine, doctors will become essentially civil servants. Their compensation and working conditions will be determined by politics, not markets.
Doctors AND the AMA fought against Medicare very hard! It wasn't today's AMA. As a now Doc, then kid in a family of Docs, I recall my Dad and Grandfather's predictions at the time. All now true. Alas, LBJ won then upped the ante with Medicaid. Having lost the war Doctors adjusted to do the best they could for their patients and themselves. Like any Ponzi scheme those in at the beginning do well, but those far enough out are sure to lose big. But if the Ponzi is big enough they take a long time to fall and their creators escape blame, at least in this world.
BTW, bribing the AMA with CPT license fees came years later than Medicare, but at least as many years before Obamacare.
Doctors AND the AMA fought against Medicare very hard! It wasn't today's AMA. As a now Doc, then kid in a family of Docs, I recall my Dad and Grandfather's predictions at the time. All now true. Alas, LBJ won then upped the ante with Medicaid. Having lost the war Doctors adjusted to do the best they could for their patients and themselves. Like any Ponzi scheme those in at the beginning do well, but those far enough out are sure to lose big. But if the Ponzi is big enough they take a long time to fall and their creators escape blame, at least in this world.
BTW, bribing the AMA with CPT license fees came years later than Medicare, but at least as many years before Obamacare.
To become a doctor you have to spend so long in schoool that you are brainwashed by the commie professors completely before you can get anywhere near an exit.