The Democrats' Fallback Plan For When Obamacare Inevitably Fails - Forbes

Second, or perhaps in advance of single payer legislation, watch for the federal government to restrict doctors from practicing, or possibly even criminalize them, unless they accept all patients with insurance paying government-defined rates for medical tests and treatments.  We know that ObamaCare and its Independent Payment Advisory Board, IPAB, will force prices for medical services lower and lower by direct design, so that by 2019, payments for Medicare will be even lower than Medicaid. While some doctors will swallow government-dictated low reimbursements, undoubtedly more and more physicians will refuse to see patients under such health plans – easy to foresee, since this has already happened to Medicaid and Medicare patients across the country. But this presumably will not be tolerated by HHS Secretary Sebelius and our President. It is not at all unimaginable that the federal government will soon tie all medical licensure to accepting the new edicts, as has already been contemplated in Massachusetts by state legislators.

via www.forbes.com

Oh dear. --TS

Comments

[Jonathan]

Maybe we'll be to get good medical care at cash hospitals on Indian reservations and on cruise ships 3.1 miles offshore.

[titan]

The doctors are limiting the Medicaid/Medicare patients because the reimbursement levels are below their costs (office space, staff, insurance, supplies, etc.). The feds can't order the doctors to work for less than their business expenses (at least not for long). The industry will need to be federalized, and the doctors and other health workers turned into government employees.

[Jimbino]

As much as I hate Obamacare and have prepared to avoid it, I feel that Amerikan docs so richly deserve the hand they are being dealt. I have fought for years for open pricing, cash discounts, and elimination of certification requirements, while the AMA has fought even harder to preserve the doc monopoly. The docs, meanwhile, have been complaisant in those policies and complacent in their certified sinecures.

Now let them stew in their juices while I pay for my healthcare in Mexico, Brazil, Costa Rica, Hungary, Czech Republic, India, Thailand and, eventually, Cuba.