Guest editorial: Doctors are NOT public servants, Tom Perriello

Yeah, Democrats have declared war on doctors, which is why the AMA endorsed the health care bill. This is the most idiotic post I’ve read here yet, and that’s saying something. Mao did not invent the concept of public servitude, Steve Peters, he perverted it. And what’s arrogant is not his voting the way most people who voted for him wanted him to, but your suggestion that we are not part of We the People.

The Schilling Show: Your friendly neighborhood purveyor of disdainful nonsense.

I am a physician who, among other things, has served in the U.S. military.

I guess that my message to SP is to ask for less vitriol and more facts.

For example, early in SP’s diatribe is a line about “The Communistic concept of public indentureship and mass servitude of health care professionals….”

The author is apparently unaware – as are many others who bandy about terms like “communistic” and “socialized medicine” – that the U.S. military health care system is a system of socialized medicine…and that the related system that cares for military dependents outside of military hospitals is a federal government-run system. Sure there are sometimes frustrations with those systems, just as there are with any health care system, including new ones…but if SP were to ask most active duty or retired military types, he would find that they almost uniformly would NOT want to trade in the military and TriCare system for a private health care system.

It’s not my impression that many of my health care colleagues think that the Democratic Party has declared war on Doctors. As pointed out in the earlier comment, the AMA and many other national medical organizations supported the new bill as better than leaving things as they were. I think that SP should advise his readers to ask their primary care doctors what THEY think.

It might not be a bad idea for doctors to get paid for keeping their patients healthy. It might not be a bad idea for doctors to work – as many do – for the benefit of their communities and neighborhoods. It might not be a bad idea for doctors to NOT be paid more than $700,000/year, the salary that the Daily Progress reported a few days ago for a UVa physician.

…less vitriol and more facts…

The AMA endorsement, after initially being strongly opposed to Obamacare, was based on projections and promises made by Obama and his administration. Tom Perriello repeated those projections and promises, that Obamacare would cut costs and cover millions more people, at local Townhall meetings in the face of common sense opposition.

Shortly after Tom Perriello voted Obamacare into law, suppressed reports surfaced from the Health and Human Services and the Congressional Budget Office that showed Obamacare will cause costs to rise in the billions over the next decade. Will Tom Perriello admit he was wrong?

And Iceman, your reference to TriCare is false, as it lacks the coercive measures of Obamacare, among many other key differences. You, must not have read the Bill. That’s ok, you didn’t vote for it–but Tom Perriello did. And many physicians who have read the bill are worried about not being able to treat patients the old fashioned way, based on their knowledge and judgement; but being forced to follow national standards set by federal agencies–the Obamacare way. Or as Tom Perriello puts it, being relegated to the statis of “public servants” under a big gov’t master.

Fact is, if Obama’s healthcare “system” will so improve care, heal the sick, cure disease, and bring peace and harmony–then why the need to empower the IRS to enforce it? Tom Perriello should answer that question. All that he has said is that the Healthcare bill needs to be improved. He doesn’t elaborate on what improvements he believes it needs. More IRS agents to enforce it??? Do you know Iceman?

FYI

This is an excerpt from the statement of the Chief Actuary for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services from the 2010 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE BOARDS OF TRUSTEES OF THE FEDERAL HOSPITAL INSURANCE AND FEDERAL SUPPLEMENTARY MEDICAL INSURANCE TRUST FUNDS.

“In past reports, and again this year, the Board of Trustees has emphasized the strong likelihood that actual Part B expenditures will exceed the projections under current law due to further legislative action to avoid substantial reductions in the Medicare physician fee schedule. While the Part B projections in this report are reasonable in their portrayal of future costs under current law, they are not reasonable as an indication of actual future costs. Current law would require physician fee reductions totaling an estimated 30 percent over the next 3 years—an implausible result.

Further, while the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, as amended, makes important changes to the Medicare program and substantially improves its financial outlook, there is a strong likelihood that certain of these changes will not be viable in the long range. Specifically, the annual price updates for most categories of non-physician health services will be adjusted downward each year by the growth in economy-wide productivity. The best available evidence indicates that most health care providers cannot improve their productivity to this degree—or even approach such a level—as a result of the labor-intensive nature of these services.

Without major changes in health care delivery systems, the prices paid by Medicare for health services are very likely to fall increasingly short of the costs of providing these services. By the end of the long-range projection period, Medicare prices for hospital, skilled nursing facility, home health, hospice, ambulatory surgical center, diagnostic laboratory, and many other services would be less than half of their level under the prior law. Medicare prices would be considerably below the current relative level of Medicaid prices, which have already led to access problems for Medicaid enrollees, and far below the levels paid by private health insurance. Well before that point, Congress would have to intervene to prevent the withdrawal of providers from the Medicare market and the severe problems with beneficiary access to care that would result. Overriding the productivity adjustments, as Congress has done repeatedly in the case of physician payment rates, would lead to far higher costs for Medicare in the long range than those projected under current law.

For these reasons, the financial projections shown in this report for Medicare do not represent a reasonable expectation for actual program operations in either the short range (as a result of the unsustainable reductions in physician payment rates) or the long range (because of the strong likelihood that the statutory reductions in price updates for most categories of Medicare provider services will not be viable).”
End of quote

Basically, the man in charge of analyzing the long and short range impact of legislation on Medicare and Medicaid says the Democrats lied about the benefits of Obamacare to these programs. If the Democrats lied about the benefits that would accrue to Medicare and Medicaid, why would anyone believe any of the claims they have made about this legislation. History has shown that Federal programs with simpler goals and smaller budgets than Obamacare have failed to deliver the benefits promised within the projected costs. There is no way out of this one baby, we are going to sink under the weight of this 2,000 page manifesto.

“Everybody knows that the boat is leaking,
Everybody knows that the captain lied”