If America Already Faces a potential shortfall of 16,000 doctors within the next fifteen years, how can that possibly have been caused by last-month’s passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act? This shortage was reported this morning on Pajamas Media, on XM-Satellite Radio’s P.O.T.U.S. station.*
I Understand That President Barack Obama reportedly can walk on water and part the loaves and the fishes. But it’s hard to believe that even the Anointed One could sign a law on 23 March 2010, and the downward spiral toward medical armageddon has already begun, just three and a half weeks later.
Something Must Have Gone Wrong a While Ago. And coming off three decades of a Republican agenda, it’s a little hard to believe that it’s not the Republicans’ fault. Unless you use the kind of Republican reasoning that the Republicans use.
How Long Will We, the People, have our reasoning faculties beclouded by the slings and arrows of outrageous, mis-informed opinion? At least with adults back in the White House, we get some facts with our opinions these days.
If Doctors Are Being Chased out of medical practice by bureaucracy, the red tape comes not so much from the Federal government, as it comes from the confusion and contusions imposed by the multiplicity of insurance companies:
- Each insurance company has its own forms. Your doctor pays special personnel to handle these.
- Each insurance company has its own ideas about what procedures a patient (you) needs, and how long a patient (you) should be allowed to spend in the hospital for the surgery your doctor prescribes, and what medicines you should take in recovery. Your hospital has special “case managers” just to handle these rationing ideas.
- Each insurance company has its own “disallows.” You yourself will likely have to pay for these.
- Each insurance company has its own structure of fees negotiated for the payment of services you provide. You will either pay more or less than your neighbors because of these.
Now That’s a Lot of Red Tape. All in the name of illogical opinion and an ideology that has persistently failed the American people for much of recent history. Anything but “single-payer.” Anything but “socialism.” Anything but “health-care reform.” Anywhere else but here.
The Origin of Much of the Standardization of these terms of insurance coverage comes from coding by the Federal government, through Medicare. If anything in American medicine has worked to standardize the relationship between medical providers and medical insurers, it is the Medicare system
That Codification Is a Benefit of Government, not a curse. Without even just this little bit of standardization, every single transaction throughout American medicine would be subject not only to the preceding list of items, but also to different forms of terminology, and to different computer codes for different medical procedures, drugs, and routines.
“Different Strokes for Different Folks” may work for individual freedoms. But it does not work for medicine. It does not change the facts, no matter what the underlying opinions would have us believe.
The Laws of Cause and Effect are often subject to interpretation. And the connection between what comes first and what comes later is not always cause and effect.
But You Don’t Get to Just Make Up your own reality. If the United States will suffer a substantial shortage of doctors in the next decade and a half, and the new reform law was just passed three and a half weeks ago, the opposition to the bill was not only lame, but was also contraindicated by those who oppose the reform law now.
We All Heard the Republican Leadership in Congress repeat, over and over, through the long year of debate, “Go slow.”
We All Heard the Same Leaders Say, “We need to start over.”
We All Heard the Same Leaders Say, “We need to scrap this bill.”
If the System in Place before the three-week-old reform was already steering us toward a 16,000-doctor shortfall by 2025,* it was surely broken to start with. So how could America possibly afford to scrap this bill, start over, and go slow?
Someone Is Not Being Entirely Honest about This.
But at Least While the Republicans and the angry Tea Party Movement folks keep debating it, the Obama administration and the Democratic Party will be working on getting more Americans insured, encouraging more Americans to go into medical practice, and keeping more Americans healthy.
Outrage Is Easy.™
Talk Is Cheap.
Pajamas Media Has an Agenda that defies logic.
But We Finally Have a Few Adults Back in the White House.
At Least For Now.....
The Origin of Much of the Standardization of these terms of insurance coverage comes from coding by the Federal government, through Medicare. If anything in American medicine has worked to standardize the relationship between medical providers and medical insurers, it is the Medicare system
That Codification Is a Benefit of Government, not a curse. Without even just this little bit of standardization, every single transaction throughout American medicine would be subject not only to the preceding list of items, but also to different forms of terminology, and to different computer codes for different medical procedures, drugs, and routines.
“Different Strokes for Different Folks” may work for individual freedoms. But it does not work for medicine. It does not change the facts, no matter what the underlying opinions would have us believe.
The Laws of Cause and Effect are often subject to interpretation. And the connection between what comes first and what comes later is not always cause and effect.
But You Don’t Get to Just Make Up your own reality. If the United States will suffer a substantial shortage of doctors in the next decade and a half, and the new reform law was just passed three and a half weeks ago, the opposition to the bill was not only lame, but was also contraindicated by those who oppose the reform law now.
We All Heard the Republican Leadership in Congress repeat, over and over, through the long year of debate, “Go slow.”
We All Heard the Same Leaders Say, “We need to start over.”
We All Heard the Same Leaders Say, “We need to scrap this bill.”
If the System in Place before the three-week-old reform was already steering us toward a 16,000-doctor shortfall by 2025,* it was surely broken to start with. So how could America possibly afford to scrap this bill, start over, and go slow?
Someone Is Not Being Entirely Honest about This.
But at Least While the Republicans and the angry Tea Party Movement folks keep debating it, the Obama administration and the Democratic Party will be working on getting more Americans insured, encouraging more Americans to go into medical practice, and keeping more Americans healthy.
Outrage Is Easy.™
Talk Is Cheap.
Pajamas Media Has an Agenda that defies logic.
But We Finally Have a Few Adults Back in the White House.
At Least For Now.....
(($;-)}
Gozo!
_______________
*Pajamas Media broadcast on P.O.T.U.S. XM Satellite Radio (04/17/2010)
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