from a former president of the American Medical Association, Dr. Daniel Johnson Jr.: Memo to My Fellow Physicians: We Have Reached the Moment of Truth. It’s well worth your time, because he knows what he’s talking about and doesn’t hesitate to call a spade a spade; I found his thumbnail history of the debate over nationalized health care particularly interesting. Here’s an excerpt:
Now, with elderly, poor, women, and children covered, all that is left is a segment of the population outside of those groups that is reasonably self-sufficient and most of which has private insurance. Those folks will be forced into government coverage because of a “public option” plan that all intellectually honest observers, including both proponents and opponents of single payer, realize is a Trojan horse for a Canadian-style single-payer system. Once private insurance is crowded out by the unfair competitive tactics of the federal government intruding into an already flawed marketplace, it will be a simple matter to consolidate all of these different groups into one single entity.
What does this mean to physicians and their patients? “Clinical effectiveness research,” when operated by government instead of the medical profession, will become “cost effectiveness” restrictions on what care is available and to whom—determined by the federal government. It will only be a matter of a short time before Americans will enjoy the pleasures of “quality adjusted life years” wherein people my age will be denied services from which they might benefit because of their age and/or some other infirmity.
We don’t have to make this stuff up: It is already the law of the land in some other developed countries, such as the United Kingdom, and has been long advocated here in the U.S. by voices from the left, including major media outlets. The federal government will exert total control over payment for all medical services.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to imagine what will happen when the payment-control mechanisms used by Medicare are extended to the entire private sector. The occasional inability of Medicare patients to find physicians who are willing to provide for their needed care at a loss will become the standard experience when the cost shortfall can no longer be shifted to the private sector.
Practicing physicians in the U.S. have become accustomed to the continued availability of ever better diagnostic and treatment innovations created by our academic and research colleagues. In my own specialty field of diagnostic imaging, the pace and breadth of scientific innovation to help us help clinicians be more effective in the management of sick and injured individuals or in the early detection of life-threatening illness, such as breast cancer, has been amazing. Yet I remember only too well the mid 1970s when the federal government and all but two states (Nebraska and Louisiana) did everything in their power to deny the American people access to the technology of computed tomography because of cost. As sure as the night follows the day, we will see that same kind of limitation imposed, but on a much larger scale. But in contrast to the ’70s, total federal control will prevent physicians and patients from overcoming the stricture as we were able to do back then.
Read the whole thing, and remember, this man is a good doctor: take his diagnosis and prescriptions seriously.
Thanks for the HT… I'm trying to remember if I tweeted on that or if it was one of my "Latte Links." I think I tweeted it.
It was a good post though.
I saw it posted in your list of shared items, for which my appreciation.