Thursday, November 21, 2013

If Doctors Boycott Obamacare, Squeeze Their Pay!

Truth Revolt ^ | 11/21/2013 | Bradford Thomas 


The reality of the insatiable liberal desire for control and need to punish those who refuse to play the statist game is on full display in a recent Slate class-envy piece, “Doctors Fire Up the Obamacare Waaambulance,” by Matthew Yglesias.
Fully acknowledging the reality that doctors will be paid (far) less under Obamacare and, thus, will reject the system in droves, Yglesias tries to assuage his liberal readers’ fears by presenting the perfect punishment for the miserly, self-serving M.D. class: Use the Obamacare leviathan and regulations to “reduce doctors’ payment rates elsewhere in the system.” Here’s the key passage:
Medical doctors are highly paid professionals. They earn more money—a lot more money—than your average American. What's more, American doctors get paid more than doctors in any other country. Given how much of health care is financed either directly (Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans Affairs, public-sector workers) or indirectly (tax subsidy for employer-provided insurance) by the federal government, it's natural to make restraining doctors' income part of any program for making health care more affordable. So when you read stories about doctors whining that Affordable Care Act exchange plans don't pay them enough, please throw up a little in your mouth and proceed to ignore the doctors' complaints. The only practical reason to worry about low compensation for doctors in the ACA exchanges is it may cause them to boycott exchange patients. If that happens, the solution is to reduce doctors' payment rates elsewhere in the system. If we ever reach the point where American doctors have been squeezed so badly that they start fleeing north of the border to get higher pay in Canada, then we've squeezed too hard. Until that happens, forget about it.
One positive about the destructive rollout of Obamacare: It's giving America a hard look at the rank underbelly of the radical left.

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