If doctors are already not taking Medicare patients, will they opt out of Obamacare? - Granite Grok

If doctors are already not taking Medicare patients, will they opt out of Obamacare?

Or is that the reason why Obamacare was structured the way it was – political and policy decisions that effectively force doctors to sell out their practices to hospitals, and for hospitals to merge with others simply to better scale up to deal with lowered payments?  Why would this be happening?  Simply the penchant of Progressives to want to work within Big Government and crony arrangements with Big Business, this was to be expected from the Law. Also, it is about Power – the ability to control.  Fewer entities means easier control.  Neo-Feudalism will require this.  Everything / one else will be serfs.  But I disgress:

Doctor Opt Outs from MedicareDoctors are increasingly NOT taking new Medicare patients – a severe problem for those whose doctors retire and the newly retired Boomers:

  • 9,539 physicians who had accepted Medicare opted out of the program in 2012, up from 3,700 in 2009 (vs 685,000 enrolled Medicare docs)

Only 81% of family docs take Medicare

  • 33% of primary-care physicians didn’t accept new Medicaid patients in 2010-2011.

More and more, doctors are fed up with both Government and insurance intrusions and paperwork – I keep hearing more and more doctors going back to “no insurance accepted? / pay per visit / concierge biz model, enlarging the gap between doctors available and doctors needed.

Will the “salvation from Obamacare” come not from scaredy politicians but Doctors “going Galt”?  What will be the Progressive answer to that?  Forcing doctors to participate at the cost of huge fines or license to practice yanked – or even jail for “violating the common weal”?

How ironic that would be – Progressives all about being anti-bullying ending up being the Biggest Bullies of all time. Taken to the extreme, simply to enure that a political ideology succeeds, take your pick – would they be indentured servants or all-but-slaves?

Go ahead, NHDP Press Flack Harrell Kirstein, let’s have THIS Politically Incorrect conversation!

(H/T: WSJ via The Corner)

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