In order to make Obamacare appear "deficit neutral," the Democrats chose not to fund the so-called "Doc Fix"...thereby putting into motion a 21% cut in payments to already underpaid doctors who provide medicare and medicaid services.
Despite their transparent cooking of the books, Obama and the dems are now demanding billions of dollars in new, unfunded debt to pay the doctors - claiming (accurately, if belatedly) that failure to do so "jeopardizes the health of elderly citizens."
A temporary funding measure is expected to pass...but in the interim, doctors will receive the new, lower payments and have to file additional reams of paperwork to eventually get the rest of what they're owed.
And more than ever before, they're saying "I'm mad as hell and I'm not taking it anymore."
New statistics show that record numbers of doctors are refusing to see medicare and medicaid patients. According to Lori Helm, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, the doctors are saying "I can't afford to keep losing money."
So thanks to the Obama administration, tar balls aren't the only thing that are going to be collecting on beaches. There will also be a lot more retired doctors.
14 comments:
«Louis'» doctor has quit accepting Medicare and Medicaid patients and has anti-Obamacare cartoons in every examining room.
I'm so tired of this class envy and redistribution of wealth. I'm not rich and never will be....but I don't envy the money the doctors make. They deserve every penny for the large responsibility they take on. They have to be almost perfect to avoid lawsuits and they have to study and rack up so many college bills and work long hours....I don't begrudge them their money at all. And its scary that the government wants to do it because its going to affect MY care. Face it...rich doctors are happy doctors, and happy doctors are going to give quality care. Most doctors are in it to do a good job and therefore get rich.... if you take away the money, then you take away the doctor.
Health Care could have been solved with TORT reform alone. And with a little spin, it could have sounded like a Liberal idea...
http://tinyurl.com/36zt42m
I'm sure that this will all even out someday. There will be plenty of medical professsionals to treat patients. The shortage will be patients who can understand whatever foreign language/dialect said medical professional speaks. Just like there are rare unknown diseases that confound the medical profession, there will be rare and obscure dialects/languages that will confound future patients. I guess for the elderly, the upside is that their hearing is the first thing to go, so maybe whatever language spoken by their doctor will be a moot issue.
By the way, Stilton Jarlsberg, I notice that in some of your venues, you use "MD" after your name. Are you a cartoonist that moonlights as a doctor?
alan- the "MD" relates to a book I wrote some years ago (the business parody "Who Cut the Cheese?") and is actually an unearned accolade, much like the president's Nobel prize.
Actually Stilt, I think you've earned "MD" far before the Prez earned that Nobel Prize. Er...for what that's worth...
AngieComics- A great point! Tort Reform was estimated to save over $500 billion in ten years, and drive down costs, without costing a dime or requiring new bureaucracy.
During the healthcare debate, Obama said he was "open to ideas" from the Right including Tort Reform, and would consider it. And consider it he did...
Soon after, language appeared in the House bill saying that states which enacted tort reform would be penalized, and would lose federal health funds.
And why? Because the goal was never to reduce costs, and always wealth-shifting and power-grabbing.
Tort reform would hurt the trial lawyers who see this as a cash cow, and they fund the Dems handsomely. Considering the total lack of ethics evident in everything that the Obama administration does, it it not the least bit surprising that they would not give a moment's consideration to Tort Reform. They look after their own, at least until they decide to throw them under the bus.
Reducing the quality and the quantity of medical care are both objectives of ObamaCare. This will lead to many, many more deaths, particularly among older Americans, thus giving Obama his own massive numbers of dead, just as for Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot. Every communist leader winds up murdering large numbers of his people, and this is a way that Obama can do it without firing a shot, just be sure that medical care is withheld from the elderly. In the past, the US has done an excellent job of keeping the elderly alive to very old ages, but Obama intends to reverse that to make this a country for the young only.
Can anyone tell me the the #1 vocation of those who eventually become Senators and Representatives? I means besides thieves scoundrels and nincompoops? Answer that, and you'll better understand the symbiotic relationship between lawyers and most politicians...
So much for living to see great grandchildren...
Dr. D- We agree that there is a deliberate, if unstated, intent in medical cutbacks to kill off many seniors in order to reduce the debt load of entitlement payments.
And as you say, there doesn't need to be a single shot fired. You just have to make sure that seniors are required to have only government healthcare, then you pull back enough of that healthcare to let them die of natural causes (albeit unnaturally early).
and on it goes
If Obama & the socialists (how's that for a band name?) actually cared about the health of the lower class people who can't afford adequate healthcare, they could've started by eliminating the unconscionable subsidies that make it possible to get a Big Mac for a dollar. There's a reason you can't get a Big Mac in Europe for fewer than 3 euros. There's a reason why the world's destitute look like they just walked out of Dachau whereas ours can't even fit through the public bus door.
If Obama really cared about their health, he would highlight these issues for the American people and attempt to change the rules to make it easier to eat healthier. Why is he not parading around the morbidly obese & trying to guilt trip us? Perhaps instead of subsidizing factory "farming" they could subsidize actual farming, or even save money by removing farming subsidies altogether. Just some food for thought.
Erik- You're totally right. On the most recent episode of "Penn & Teller's Bullshit," it was pointed out that one of the reasons so many foods are so fattening is that they're full of corn syrup. And why is that? Because government subsidies make the corn so cheap that manufacturers can hardly afford not to put it into everything. And if there happens to be a plague of diabetes later, well...what the heck.
Or how about cigarettes? Addictive and carcinogenic? Say, there's a winning combination! But rather than ban them, the government gets in on that good drug-addiction money through taxes.
And as a bonus, tens of thousands of smokers will die without collecting their full share of social security or medicare benefits! Which may be why the government pays subsidies to the tobacco farmers who are growing this life-destroying poison.
We'll say it again- there's absolutely nothing about Obamacare that suggests it's intended to improve anyone's health.
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