“It ain’t going to be pretty, but Medicare will go the way Medicaid is going now...which is bankrupt.”
Yep. The only caveat I would add is that currently doctors can refuse patients. Hospitals can not. The conventional hospital will be closing but true private hospitals will start opening. We already see this in standalone ER’s, surgery centers, etc. that won’t take Gubmint insurance.
People had better wake up for there own sake, regardless of their country, as the seams are starting to rip. As goes medicine, so goes America.
We’re also seeing some states acting to bar private hospitals from opening, other than the kind of “private” hospitals that are designed around catering to Medicare and Medicare patients.
That is only sort of true....
If I am on staff at a hospital, most hospitals will require that I take 'call' for emergencies as a part of my privileges. When I am 'on call', I usually have no right of refusal to see patients based on financial/insurance status. So any hospital-based physician kind of has their hands tied...and this is why there are often hospital/physician agreements with income guarantees or stipends etc, because without them, if the hospital had a bad 'payor' mix, no physician would probably work there. Hospitals don't make physicians 'whole' but they at least try in most cases to soften the blow.
But that money has to come from somewhere...and the government's constant squeezing of hospitals and physicians reimbursements cannot go on forever. Eventually hospitals close and physicians/staff move on to some place that isn't overrun with no pay/medicaid/medicare patients.
If everyone knew the half of what the government already does to screw up healthcare, they wouldn't be so fast to clamor for more government control.