Damned if you do, more damned if you don’t. Not a very good way to run a business. Did I say business? Why yes. Yes I did. Health care providers, namely doctors, are in reality, a business. One that you can pay for as needed. Health insurance helps offset the costs involved with treatment, but it is still a business.
Health care rationing is usually done by the patients themselves. If it is something minor, you tend to take some motrin and move on. If there is universal coverage of heath care, then people start going to the health care providers for the minor crap. Costs increase. Providers are now less available for the major things that come along, or they triage and ignore the less ill persons and treat the more sick patients first. Similar to the emergency room. If you ain’t dying, you ain’t getting seen any time soon.
Looking at it in current terms, Medicare, is a nationalized system of health care. Doctors can and often do, opt out of Medicare because they aren’t reimbursed sufficiently to cover their costs. The number is of doctors opting out is increasing.
Now the morons in the Senate, you should read that as Democrats, and RINOs, are trying to make Medicare even more painful for doctors. Let’s cut their reimbursement by 5% if they are in the top 10% of providers that have high costs.
This opens a multitude of problems.
Doctors: Damned If They Do, More Damned If They Don’t
By Gene Schwimmer
Americans worried that Obamacare will lead to de facto rationing of health care to senior citizens can stop worrying. It’s already here. Obviously, the fewer doctors willing to treat Medicare patients, the fewer the opportunities to get treated and with each passing year, the number of such doctors decreases.
Truth, Lies and In Between 