[Shimmer1]

I’m not elderly, but am on Medicare. I’d better find a new PCP soon! No one is going to want to take Medicare patients soon.

I receive excellent care from my physicians, but am not getting any better, in fact, worse all the time. What will that say about my excellent drs????

[hinckley buzzard]

What this will accomplish is the bureaucratization of medical care beyond anything we have seen before. One effect inevitably will be the evolution of a faked up reporting and record keeping system. Paperwork will be tailored to the requirements of the reimbursement system, not to the needs of the patient. Treatment for some diagnoses will become unacceptable for reimbursements--those diagnoses will disappear.

Doctors will continue to treat patients but the records will progressively diverge from reality until no one knows exactly what is being done for whom: just as other government statistics are already useless because they do not reflect reality.

Welcome to Soviet medicine.