Inside Baseball?
Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP,MACE
Last week a reader made this comment.
Stanley:
I have been reading your columns for many weeks.
The information you provide is mostly inside baseball for the medical community. How about some focus on the patients?
I disagree. I am trying to help patients and physicians understand that President Obama’s healthcare reform act will be a disaster for patients and patient care. His goal is to destroy the present healthcare system and replace it with a government run single party payer system. He realizes he cannot do it in one step.
He has previously said he prefers a single party payer system but he does not have the votes for a single party payer system.
President Obama’s goal is to set up an irrevocable infrastructure for the healthcare system that will control patient choice. It will extinguish patients’ freedom to choose their doctors and their care despite his public pronouncements.
By eliminating patients’ ability to control their healthcare dollars, President Obama is going to limit access to care and ration care as well. The new infrastructure will eliminate end of life decision making by patients.
His goal is to force patients to be totally dependent on government deciding their healthcare needs. He is determined to control their healthcare dollars. He will waste taxpayers’ dollars on a government bureaucracy that is inefficient and ineffective as he tries to redistribute wealth.
After President Obama’s healthcare reform plan fails, the next step is the public option. The government is not going to close more than two hundred new agencies and start over.
The public option will not be successful. The government will then move to a single party payer system.
President Obama has stated he would protect consumers from the big bad healthcare insurance industry. Yet new regulations, by his ever increasing bureaucracy, have been written. The new regulations will provide the healthcare insurance industry with a guarantee of more customers plus the ability to pile bogus expenses into the benefit expense column.
Medicare and Medicaid are bankrupt. President Obama is not eliminating the profit the healthcare insurance industry makes on Medicare or Medicaid.
How is he going to make universal Medicare and Medicaid solvent by expanding the entitlement to the entire population?
If he keeps reducing physician reimbursement, he will drive the work force out of the system. If a physician refers a patient to a home healthcare agency, the value of the home healthcare nurse visit is at least 3 times the value of a physician visit. The rules are stupid.
Home healthcare is important. Inefficiency in the bureaucracy makes home healthcare unaffordable. It will be rationed in the future.
Rather that fixing the bureaucratic inefficiency which adds no value to direct patient care, President Obama is going to limit access to the care.
A huge problem in patient inability to get efficient care is the problem of defensive medicine and the lack of malpractice reform. President Obama completely ignores this $750 billion dollar a year problem
President Obama is setting up a system that will commoditize medical care. He is destroying the patient physician relationship so essential to good medical outcomes
He is also imposing a mandate requiring consumers to buy healthcare insurance. I believe the mandate is unconstitutional as do at least 30 state attorney generals.
President Obama is not developing an infrastructure to encourage patients to be responsible for their health or healthcare dollars. He is developing an infrastructure making patients dependent on government for medical care.
The only way to decrease the onset of chronic disease is to make it stylish to avoid chronic disease. This can be achieved by effective public awareness initiatives.
President Obama is not providing financial incentives for physicians to create chronic disease management systems to decrease the onset of complications of chronic diseases. The treatment of the complications of chronic disease is 80% of direct medical care costs.
I have tried to point out all the moves President Obama has made toward destroying the healthcare system. The healthcare system will fail. When it does the new healthcare system will subject patients to less than ideal medical care.
Patients/consumers understand all these tricks. President Obama is not adding value to the medical care system
My comments are Inside Baseball comments for both consumers and the medical community. These comments are not available through the traditional media. Physicians and consumers must become aware of what is going on.
The opinions expressed in the blog “Repairing The Healthcare System” are, mine and mine alone.