Physicians - Obama was warned - MDs going Galt - Granite Grok

Physicians – Obama was warned – MDs going Galt

From last week, the New England Journal of Medicine reported some really bad news if Obamacare passes (via Hot Air):

The New England Journal of Medicine, hardly a bastion of conservative thought, polled health-care providers to determine their reaction to ObamaCare, and discovered that it has many doctors looking for the exits.  Almost half of all general-practice doctors would feel compelled to leave medicine altogether if it passes:

  • 46.3% of primary care physicians (family medicine and internal medicine) feel that the passing of health reform will either force them out of medicine or make them want to leave medicine.
  • 36% of physicians would not recommend medicine as a career, regardless of health reform.  27% would recommend medicine as a career but not if health reform passes.
  • 62.7% of physicians feel that health reform is needed but should be implemented in a more targeted, gradual way, as opposed to the sweeping overhaul that is in legislation.

Why not?  They are going to get absolutely NAILED by Obamacare – remember, Obama started this attack on our healthcare system by attacking Doctors first (remember raising their income by amputating feet" and "doing more tonsillectomies"?

They are in the target income bracket for higher taxes

They are small businesses owners that have to now deal with higher costs of having employees due to Government mandates

They are generally self-employed -> a second round of getting nailed by higher taxes

They generally, being better off, INVEST their money (you know, the REAL definition of investing instead of the perversion said by Progressive Politicians to cover for "more spending"), so they get hit again.

Newer government regs are going to make it MUCH harder to deal with the labyrinth of the bureaucracy’s new rules over the next few years

My only questions is: why wouldn’t MORE just quit – it isn’t going to be worth the hassle.  I think the bet that Obama and the Progressives are making is similar to that of the Republican Party to Conservatives has been: where else are they gonna go?

Well, for the latter, the answer has been the TEA Party and telling the Republicans where they can collectively put themselves.  In the case of the doctors, I can tell you where they are going:

"going Galt"

In fact, here’s one right here.  She has decided that she is not going to be a victim in that she will deal with Government in her way (not the Government way) – which is to say, not at all.  From NRO (emphasis mine, especially at the bottom):

March 23, 2010

My Dear Patient,

As you must know, Congress has just passed extensive legislation governing health care delivery and insurance systems. Whether you agree with what it does or not, we are all now subject to this law and its sweeping changes.

I have always conducted my medical practice with my patient’s best interests as my first priority. Although not legally obliged to do so, I have routinely provided you with a receipt that has all the codes necessary to bill your own health insurance company for any reimbursement to which you are entitled. Until now, that insurance company was a free enterprise despite the fact that it was heavily regulated by state and federal laws. Now the situation is quite different. Through the new law’s mandates, regulatory powers and reform, health insurance is and will be largely a government activity which will have an ever larger jurisdiction over how doctors practice, make clinical judgments and are paid.

The new law provides for about 150 new government agencies, many of which are designed to be ‘oversight’ bureaucracies which will have the right to decide what medical care is legal to provide through insurance. Among other things,…

…they will have the right to review my medical care of you and read your medical record. Now, as soon as you submit our economic transaction to your insurance company for reimbursement, you have involved me in these regulations and put me in the jurisdiction of government for my activities, decisions and behavior as your doctor.

No one can have two masters. Either I can serve you as my patient or I can serve the government. Either I can continue to make your welfare and health my only concern, including the protection of your privacy and medical records, or I can abide by ever-increasing amounts of government regulations and dictates to my decisions. I can’t do both. I choose to continue to follow my conscience and practice medicine to serve you.

For this reason, I am responding to the situation created by this new law by exercising my right not to participate in any health insurance program. I will still provide you with the same medical services that I always have, but the interaction will be exclusively and privately between you and me. This means that I will provide you only with a receipt for the services you have paid for, but without the additional information that is required to submit your receipt for reimbursement to your health insurance company. That is the only way I can make sure there will be no conflict between following the law and serving you. Because the law is now in effect, so must these changes be to my practice.

Sincerely,

Linda Johnston, MD

The first result is that patients are going to have to pony up the cash up front.  Three things on this:

  • We may well be heading back from whence we came – of a time with little or no insurance
  • Patients will really now know what their medical care really costs.
  • The clerks that formerly did the insurance billing are now unemployed.

Will the Progressives have the temerity to actually legally force Doctors to use insurance for patient billing?   Or force them to become Government employees?

Remember – all Government laws and actions invoke the Law of Unintended Consequences (whether politicians like it or not).

>