I received an email from a friend. It was purportedly written by an MD in a major US city to all of her patients. Kudos to the doctor for her courage.
The doctor’s name, practice and address were included in the original, but I chose to remove this information. I have no reason to believe it is not a valid message.
Despite the doctor’s insistence on “facts” rather than “theory,” nothing was reported that conflicted with what an numerous objective economic analyses (theory) of the program predicted.
ObamaCare has not yet been implemented and the changes occurring already are striking. But that too was predictable and predicted. Human beings anticipate the future and act in advance of it.
Imagine the effects of this program when it is finally implemented! Only then will we, as Philosopher-Queen Nancy Pelosi told us, “see what’s in it.” Then economic entities will have a complete set of facts upon which they will take actions to protect themselves.
Dear Wonderful Patients,
This email is about the healthcare reform bill.
If you do not want to know my “opinions”, please delete this email now.
90% of my patients ask me what I think. 10% prefer to get their information from the media.
If you want to know what has actually happened to me, my family, and some of my patients, read on.
If you prefer to form your opinions without the input of your doctor, delete now.
There is MUCH “theory” out there about what the healthcare bill will and won’t do for Americans.
I actually took the nine hours to read it. I am VERY, VERY, worried about its content and what it will potentially do to American healthcare.
Let’s talk about what has actually come to pass, so far:
- 1. Our practice took a 32% pay cut from our most frequently performed procedure. (What small business can take an acute 32% pay cut and stay in business??)
- 2. Most of my patients who have been informed of their costs for healthcare for 2011 have experienced a 12%-17% increase in their premiums. NOBODY who is middle class has told me that their premiums went down. My husband works for corporate America and the package that they sent us said,” Your healthcare costs are going up for 2011 directly related to the Healthcare bill.” They did not “sugar coat” it.
- 3. My tax man has informed me that not only will I pay more for the coverage for my employees, but I will be taxed (for the first time) on the insurance that I do provide for them. He is still in the process of evaluating the details, but he believes that my employees will be taxed (for the first time) on the health benefits that I provide for them. So, rising premiums, I’ll be taxed and they’ll be taxed.
- 4. The committee that the President has formed to make decisions about what will and won’t be paid for is composed of 95% PEDIATRICIANS. There is not one surgeon, specialist, or expert in the elderly. I cannot understand, at all, how a pediatrician is going to decide what a 65 year old urology patient needs and does not need. That part worries me enormously. The make up of the committee, alone, leads me to conclude that the health of adults is taking a back seat in priority. I don’t know about you, but a federal committee telling my doctor what can and can’t be done for me is pretty frightening, to me!
- 5. Many of my patients are having a harder time getting insurance. The phone calls from people who can’t get coverage has actually gone up.
- 6. I, personally, know of three medical students who have decided to drop out of med school and pursue other careers as they fear getting a very expensive education and being forced to be a “government” doctor.
- 7. I know of 19 doctors under 63 who have “quit”. Most of them just could not take the paperwork and decreasing reimbursement.
- 8. I know of 23 doctors who have stopped seeing Medicare patients due to poor reimbursement and an overwhelming amount of paperwork. The provisions in the healthcare bill will continue to decrease what we are paid and increase the paper work.
- 9. I have had 100’s of Medicare patients who cannot find a gynecologist who takes Medicare. I have 30-40 patients who have had trouble finding an internist who takes Medicare.
- 10. PERSONALLY, I HAVE NOT SEEN ONE SCENARIO IN WHICH THE HEALTHCARE BILL HAS IMPROVED THE LIVES OF ANYONE THAT I KNOW.
- 11. Many of my patients who run small businesses have told me that “they are waiting to hire based on what they see happen with healthcare. If their costs go up too much, they will not hire.” THAT REALLY WORRIES ME.
So, what do I think is going to happen? If we continue as we are, I believe that we are going to a “two tiered” system like they have in the rest of the world. I believe that healthcare for the bottom 10% of people (economically) will improve due to the bill. I think the middle class will see HUGE increases in what they spend in healthcare (both from premiums and from taxation and from loss of coverage for many items). I think the wealthy will have access to the same level of care that the middle class and the wealthy have always had in America.
I think that the Medicare patient is going to see less and less covered and that fewer and fewer doctors will be able to take Medicare.
I do not see any way that the healthcare costs of this nation are going down. I think we will be paying for healthcare instead of taking a vacation.
I think that the lower middle class will be forced into a lower level of care (government run healthcare) as the taxes go up and the premiums go up and the costs to businesses go up. They simply will not be able to afford insurance and a private doctor.
IS THIS REALLY WHAT YOU WANT FOR AMERICA???
This is not the time to stay home on voting day. Get out and make your voice heard.
If any of you have had any direct impact to YOU, due to the healthcare bill, I’d like to know. Please only include stories of either positive or negative effects that have happened to you. I don’t need to hear any political theories of what might happen. The media has more than provided that information. I’d like to know of anything that has happened for certain, to YOU.
RChavez: 
HappyinHowell: 
Mr Misno: 
Marsha: 
Brian Wilson: 
Steve: 
Larry Crouse: 
Brian Wilson: 
Monty Pelerin: 
Bob Snyder: 
This email is absolutely on the money and similar to what I am seeing in Houston, TX, even though Texas has weathered this economic storm pretty well.
Most people do not understand what the end-game of Obamacare truely is: it is the complete destruction of the private side of the private-public enterprise that is the American medical model.
Here is how it will go down, as I read the tea leaves.
Obamacare will destroy the private medical insurance industry, not that I have any love in my heart for them, they have behaved atrociously and will now reap what they have sown. The problem with this schadenfrueden view is that reimbursements from private insurers basically subsidize the less-than-cost reimbursement from Medicare and Medicaid. Once this subsidy is gone, either because the insurance company is gone OR because their reimbursements fall to Medicare and below, hospitals and physicians offices will start to close. Our office recently received notice from Aetna that they will adopt in toto the Medicare reimbursement schedules in 2011. And so it begins.
I assure you, our costs in the healthcare industry have not diminished, in fact, with each new edition of the Federal Register, we are finding even more regulations/fines/taxes to comply with. Our lawyers and accountants have waded through the health care bill (yet another expense) and tell us that even more are on the way. At some point the declining reimbursement curve crosses the rising cost curve and then it is over, kaput, bumpkiss, put a fork in it. We can’t just print money when our cash flow goes negative, we just close our doors.
The job-killing effect of Obamacare are already being felt, adding even more people to the rolls of the unemployed and thus the uninsured.
There are tons of other examples I can give you about how this bill will destroy the private medical providers, but I think you get the picture.
So what happens when the 4000 community hospitals already on financial life support start to fail? What happens when physicians, and there are only 250,000 of us in the US, start shutting our doors? I won’t even comment on our refusal to accept Medicare/Medicaid – the states/feds will simply require participation in these programs for licensure, a la, Massachusetts.
Will the private medical providers now be “too big to fail”? Will we get a “bail out”? Ya buddy, when the fracking US is fracking broke, don’t hold your breath. Some providers think they will get some big juicy AIG money bomb, a sad delusion given how this administration talks about doctors, good luck with that.
We may, if we are politically connected to the right Congressperson, get a pennies-on-the-dollar bailout, just like what happened to the bondholders of GM and Chrylser. And we providers will be, essentially, nationalized.
Any of you ever taken a gander at your local charity hospital or clinic? Or been enmeshed in the byzantine rules/regulations of a VA hospital? Go right now, take a picture of it because that is going to seem like the good old days when Obamacare comes into its own.
Except your political elites, OF COURSE, they have exempted themselves from this insanity.