Posted on 04/23/2013 8:01:21 PM PDT by neverdem
I take the 40,000 foot view. Medicine became too expensive because the law of supply & demand was not allowed to operate, due to the intervention of the AMA. That’s why more than 200 applicants to medschool are rejected for every one accepted. As a result, the guvmint tried their statist/librul solution, which is represented by Obamacare. Neither side has it right.
This article is true. Do to EMR’s I have quit my private practice of 22 years. I will now work for a hospital. I will work shifts,give up the headache of worrying about overhead, have time off and make more money. Maybe, I can make it 10 years then I will go GALT!! Unless it become illegal. I would not be surprised.
Like everything else the government touches - once federal government money came pouring in (via Medicaid and Medicare) the entire system became perverted.
Once doctors and hospitals stopped looking to the patient to pay for their own health care and started looking to the governmment, the government became the boss and the one they had to please.
Look how government money has destroyed the nations schools in the same way.
Everything the government touches, it destroys.
Again, ain’t central planning great! We’re being set up for a great Marxist fall. It never works. Ask the USSR!
Yep. I’m an 56 y/o anesthesiologist. because of the bullshit I’m down to working eleven weeks a year. I’ve learned to live modestly.
Look how government money has destroyed the nations schools in the same way.
Everything the government touches, it destroys.
Not just health care and education, people, too.
Government money has destroyed generations of welfare dependents.
Indeed, everything it touches...
Unfortunately, what's evolved over the last 70 years in no way resembles the health care system that would have evolved in a free market environment. The system we have today is unsustainable, and the only option is to let it crash and burn. A lot of people will be very unhappy when that happens.
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.
the obama admin used the coding system as the carot to get ama approval for obamacare.
either they capitulate to slavery under obamacare or their coding system would be replaced. (no money for using the codes)
I don’t want to hear it. The system was great as long as the doctors were milking it. All these systemic failures could have been averted had the doctors stood against them, but instead groups like the AMA pushed them along.
A quibble: HMOs were government creations. Ted Kennedy led the legislative charge to create and impose HMOs on private insurers. The The Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973 (42 U.S.C. §300e) was signed into law by Richard Nixon.
Additional amendments to the law required all private insurers to offer HMO plans alongside other plans sold to employers.
Ted Kennedy and the democrats are 100% responsible for the creation and problems of HMOs.
Other than that I enjoyed the physician’s perspective on the state of medical care today. Things are going to get a lot worse, very soon.
The ICD is being revised as we speak, I know the project manager handling it for a large national carrier. The AMA didn't get any delay of new codes.
It’s late, and bookmarking for later, skimming, I saw your comment.
Yes, insurance really affected health care. Philosophically, people have given their health over to the conglomerates. Formerly, people ate right and took care of themselves or got sick if they didn’t.
THe govt, BO, moved in and took over a sick system.
Our heath care system thrives on sickness, people staying sick, undergoing procedures, and giving over their health to controlling doctors, who, by the way, have not renounced abortion. They are NOt a pro life org.
People are going to have to take responsibility for their health and it’s going to freak them out.
later
meanwhile, experienced RNs can make 108k/year woking 15 shifts per month with the VA. Go figure.
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.
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