The Noose Tightens on Your Healthcare
Seven years ago my wife and I re-located to the Asheville, NC area. I was 63 and in search of the services required in a new area. Among these needs was a medical doctor.
I located a family practice nearby, looked at the backgrounds of the doctors, chose one and called to set up an appointment. While providing preliminary information over the phone, I was told that Dr. X was not taking any new Medicare patients. I was not on Medicare I said. But, I was told, I would be in two years. I ended up being allocated to a doctor whose Medicare burden apparently was light.
As it turned out the doctor I was assigned to was fine as best as I can tell (altho
ugh I am no longer with him). My objection was that I was unable to choose my doctor as a result of government interference in the medical profession. This story illustrates what price controls do to medicine or any other good for that matter.
My experience was seven years ago, before anyone ever heard of Barack Obama or ObamaCare. Medicare was already squeezing prices on doctors. The supply/quality of service was affected then. For an economist, there are no surprises in this story. Price controls always reduce supply and quality.
Flash forward to today and matters have gotten much worse. When (if?) ObamaCare is implemented, matters will deteriorate more. Here is an article of pre-ObamaCare and what is now the state of the health industry. None of this can be improved by more intervention. That will only make matters worse, much worse. From the Daily Caller:
Thirty-six percent of doctors say they are no longer accepting new Medicaid patients due in large part to declining reimbursements, a new national survey has found.
The survey of 2,232 physicians across all specialties conducted in late April by Jackson Healthcare in Atlanta — the fourth-largest health care staffing company in the U.S. — further found that broken down for specialty, 66 percent of dermatologists, 64 percent of endocrinologists,
