It's time for another good idea, bad idea.
Good idea: Making sure everyone in the USA has health insurance
Bad idea: Putting everyone in the USA on Medicare
Yep, folks, that's the way things look. The House just proposed a bill that would "cover 95 percent of Americans" with their new healthcare system. Well, they almost proposed a bill- they have yet to put a price tag on it. Maybe because they couldn't propose a number that big without giggling? All we know is that its' bigger than the Senate's proposal, which is supposed to cost 1.4 trilion (yep- 14 with eleven 0's) dollars over the next 10 years.
Doctors would be paid what they are currently paid for Medicare patients plus 5%. That sounds great...unless you know anything about Medicare. I admit right now that I am not in the category of people who know a lot about it, but I am someone who knows something about it.
I used to work at a Doctor's office. The doctors I worked for could only see a limited number of Medicare patients. Why? Because the government paid them next to nothing for those visits. They lost money on every Medicare patient they saw. And now we want to put 95% of Americans on this program? The doctors won't be able to afford to stay open.
Now I know doctors make a lot. But it also costs a lot of money to be a doctor. You have to pay a rather large support staff (Where I worked, there were about 3 nurses, 1 receptionist, 1 file clerk, and 1 insurance specialist per doctor). You also pump a massive amount of your income into malpractice insurance.
They also expect drug companies to "pay rebates to the government on drugs dispensed" to low-income beneficiaries. They want pharmaceuticals to give the government a piece of the action every time they sell drugs to poor people? In case you hadn't heard, big pharma is going under. They don't have any money. Producing new drugs costs an amazing amount of money, and once they pay to produce one, a foreign company can sell it way cheaper. (Ever wonder why prescription meds from Canada are so cheap?)
I think the big lesson we see from this is that we can't have it all. Sorry, folks. We can't expect to sue over every little thing that we don't like AND have cheap doctors. We can't expect to buy off-brand drugs AND have big drug companies giving piles of money away. It just doesn't work that way.
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3 comments:
Well said. Obama recently spoke to the AMA (American Medical Association) and mentioned that malpractice reform might need to be included in medical reform. I agree, but I don't think all of the trial lawyers that paid into his campaign funds will. From what I understand, a lot of the trial lawyers are Dems. Seeing as Dems have control of Congress at the moment, it will be interesting to see who pulls harder.
I've been reading a lot of med blogs lately, and it seems like some of the happiest doctors are those who don't accept Medicare and Medicaid. Like you say, sticking everyone under Medicaid is not going to fix the problems.
Check this out, Dave. This guy says only about 10-15 million Americans are really uninsured-- which is about what I would have guessed from the numbers that usually get tossed around in the news (50 million or more).
So what does it mean to cover 95% of Americans? Well, there are a little more than 300 million Americans, and 95% of that is 285 million. That leaves.... 15 million that would not be covered-- which is... exactly the same amount as are not covered now?
Thank you, Obama!
Yeah, it's kind of amazing that Barack "Change" Obama is proposing a plan that will not change anything...except how much it costs.
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