A waiting-room letter. From this doctor.
I don’t think the donkeys realized just how high the voltage was on that rail. But they’re going to find out in two months.
Remember all of the fools on the left who said that the reason that the Republicans took over in 1994 wasn’t because of the attempt to pass health care, but because the attempt failed? Well, we’re about to see if their latest experiment confirms, or falsifies that absurd theory. Some myths die hard, but it will be interesting to see if this one survives.
I understand his feelings, but I wish he wouldn’t do that. Sick people — some of whom are contemplating the end of their lives — don’t want to be dragged into the sordid swamp of contemporary politics. A doctor’s office ought to be a refuge from that, a place of healing. This isn’t all that different from that about which Goldberg at NRO complains, when violin players and ballet dancers — Democrats almost to a man — make anti-Bush cracks from the stage. It’s not any prettier coming from the other side.
I think this is one of the greater evils of what the statists have brought us, this vast enormous central power in our lives: since the central power reaches so deep into our lives, and we expect it to influence so many issues previous generations considered entirely private, or limited to one’s immediate family and friends, it becomes inevitable that politics, i.e. the fight for control of that vast central power, reaches into everything we do. There’s no escape.
Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage’s whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.
— Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
The doctor writes about the forecast (and easily predicted) shortfall in the number of doctors needed to implement Obamacare. However, as I’ve written before, anything is possible if you lower your standards far enough. Already, some medical schools are considering allowing some students to enroll from non-premed bachelor’s degree programs and without the need to take the MCAT. They’re lowering the standard it takes to become a doctor. Think about the long-term implications of that for a moment. Then get angry.
I understand his feelings, but I wish he wouldn’t do that. Sick people — some of whom are contemplating the end of their lives — don’t want to be dragged into the sordid swamp of contemporary politics. A doctor’s office ought to be a refuge from that, a place of healing.
You are so wrong in this instance. This doctor is seeing his livelyhood and freedom to run his practice the way he sees fit destroyed. In the face of this you are advocating that this doctor just shut up and silently take whatever is shoved down his throat to avoid making some people feel uncomfortable. This is just a sign he placed in his office. I can’t think of a more polite and respectful way for the doctor to notify people who can help influence politicians of his feelings with regards to the matter.
thompson, I’m not positive, but I think Carl is lamenting that Doctor’s have to resort to this tactic because of what statists have done. I think the Doctor who wrote the letter didn’t want to put it out there. I point to the part about being non-partisan, and then the comments that follow.
Indeed, all of what Carl wrote in his second paragraph is the part that bothers me. Statists like Jim, Gerrib, O’Neil, etc. want to involve the government in all our lives, so that we always have to be active in government. They applaud Michelle Obama telling us that Barack will never let us go back to our lives inactive in government. For me, what I’ve learned since Obama became President is that nobody who sides with Democrats should be called liberal. It simply is a bastardization of the concept of liberty to associate it with some like Barack Obama.
So you are right, the Doctor should have his liberty to voice his opinion. Where I think you are wrong is that the Doctor should feel the need to do so in his practice.
Carl, rarely do I find myself in disagreement with you, but this is one of those times. I do understand that you are right when you decry the endless lecturing from actors and singers, but doctors are (by definition) the specialists in their business, and in fact are telling us about what they know. Performers, on the other hand, have no special knowlege or expertise about what they are pontificating, and thus are using only their privileged position (achieved usually through entirely irrelevant menas) to talk bollocks. I would happily have Angelina Jolie discuss the best way to bring a woman to orgasm (perhaps if she were willing to demonstrate, it would be even better) with me, but her opinions on fiscal policies are unlikely to carry much weight.
As an entirely secondary matter, the fact is that these empty-headed performers are not going to stop lecturing us, so there is little to be gained in showing restraint on our part. That isn’t an excuse for emulating their behavior, but still….
It’s “O’Neill”, two L’s.
And you’re welcome Chris, myself, and many others worry about you guys even if you don’t.
…myself, and many others worry about you guys even if you don’t.
Oh, spare us, you insufferable, ungrammatical, incoherent nannying fascist twit.
Leland, I guess Carl will have to clarify himself what he meant. I’m certain all of us can agree that the doctor has a right to post such signs. However, it sounded to me that Carl was saying that even under the current circumstances (the doctor seeing his profession and life being sucked under government control) that he would prefer the doctor not make these types of statements to his patients — even in the form of a polite sign in his office. I simply disagree and believe the doctor is in a unique position to state with authority the impact of Obamacare and I would encourage any doctor, so moved, to do likewise.
“Oh, spare us, you insufferable, ungrammatical, incoherent nannying fascist twit.”
That was worth waiting for.
…and then right on cue, an empty-headed git appears immediately after that comment. That’s at least two this week.
I laugh at physicians who grumble about governmetn interference. It’s a sour grapes letter with no admission of how the government has been interfering in medicine for sixty years. Or that the medical profession has recieved huge financial benefits from government intrusion in medical care.
The beginning of it was tax incentives for group healthcare which created deep pockets for doctors to bill into. Medicare was the ultimate interference which the profession gladly accepted since it freed the profession from doing charity work for the elderly. Now for the first time in their medical careers the gruel in the government regulated trough is getting thinner and they have the temerity to grumble.
I wonder how they would feel about an alternative where the government does not incentivize or subsidize healthcare. Would they prefer a world, which by the way, the rest of us in business actually live in, where you negotiate the price with each customer and the customer writes you a check and pays cash? I seriously doubt it.
Jar Jar,
I’m old enough to remember when Medicare was passed. The medical profession did not “gladly accept” Medicare any more than the general public has “gladly accepted” Obamacare. The AMA fought tooth and nail against it and was paid about as much attention to by the ambitious statists then in Congress as the general public was paid attention to by their ideological descendants this past year.
As for “freeing the profession from doing charity work for the elderly,” the increasing numbers of physicians who opt out of Medicare work because of administrative horseshit and declining payments don’t constitute any very obvious cheerleader class either. The great innovation of Obamacare is that it renders nearly all medical care for everyone a Medicare-like situation of institutional mendicancy in which medical professionals are, in effect, nationalized assets who work at the pleasure of their bureaucratic overseers under whatever conditions and for whatever compensation the latter deem suitable.
You may sneer at the idea of doctors working strictly for cash, but an increasing number of them have elected to do exactly that in recent years, eschewing any involvement with either government or private insurers. I’ve heard nothing about any of these practitioners missing any meals as a result.
That’s exactly what happens whenever I visit the doctor. I’ve yet to find one who’s allergic to cash.
Titus, the vast majority of doctors don’t even know what their fees are and neither do the patients. The doctor examines, treats and prescribes; then a clerk bills it to insurance or medicare. The patient neither knows nor cares what the fees are.
That’s a different dynamic than where, in every instance, the seller proposes to the buyer. “I want to provide you with you with z for x amount” and the buyer says “I can’t pay x amount, will you accept y amount?”, and both buyer and seller can walk away from the deal.
Dick,
I don’t sneer at doctors working for cash, I laud them. I wish they would all work for cash. I sneer at doctors who ignore the fact that the medical profession grew fat on government regulation which increased demand(group health and medicare) and prices.
The AMA’s historic opposition to medicare wasn’t to medicare, per se, but to proposals which excluded physician services. The act which passed, with the AMA’s acquiescence, covered physician service reimbursements at “customary, reasonable, and prevailing rates”. Since then the AMA has never proposed to get rid of Medicare and routinely lobbies to have the government increase reimbursements. The AMA is very glad to have Medicare, and the entire pool of the elderly, a very sick lot and potentially great repeat customers, able to pay doctor’s fees.
the vast majority of doctors don’t even know what their fees are and neither do the patients.
Perhaps you can find some doctors who will agree with the former. I haven’t met any, but I don’t know all of them. I certainly can read an invoice though and know the other fees, so I guess I’m a minority.
“I’ve yet to find one who’s allergic to cash.
Many years ago I had a sinus infection and wanted to go to a doctor to get a shot. I didn’t have insurance at the time so had to shop around for a doctor. This was before I knew much about the health care system. So, I first started calling all the primacare, family care, and group doctor places. These places all seemed to have the biggest ads. All but one, and they sounded perturbed, immediately asked me for insurance when I tried to book an appointment. When I said I didn’t have insurance they referred to someone else. It was a small local practice that happily said they took cash, check, or credit. I even went so far to ask what the prices were and they said $65 for the consultation and then go from there. I ended up getting a nice big shot in the butt for an extra $11 and felt great by the end of the day. Oddly enough, it was when I did get health insurance and filed that on with the doctor that my standards of care immediately changed. The next time I got another sinus infection I went in and just asked the for the shot dealio again. They shook there heads and said that the insurance company wouldn’t just pay for the shot straight up in this situation until we tried oral antibiotics first. That is the first time I barred witness to having my health care decisions weighed by other interested parties. I say vouchers and HSA’s are the way to go.
The patient neither knows nor cares what the fees are.
Now if we could only get the ones that don’t care to stop voting.