Just imagine federally-managed and controlled legal insurance. After all, legal access and justice is a real right. At Jacobson:
The great Obamacare reform is turning into the great thrust of tens of millions of people onto Medicaid.
The problem is, fewer and fewer doctors are willing to take Medicaid patients because the reimbursements are so low.
I have met numerous doctors who tell me they either refuse Medicaid patients or restrict them because the reimbursements do not cover their costs. They also double and triple book, because so many Medicaid patients who make appointments don’t show up. As to Medicare the payments currently are bearable, but only because private insurance payments for other patients make up the shortfall.
Increasingly, doctors are abandoning the government payment train wreck, and going all cash or some hybrid. This all was foreseeable and was foreseen.
The millions of new Medicaid patients will have insurance, just no doctors to see them. That is a feature, not a glitch, to those who want single payer. Obamacare is proceeding accordingly to plan.
Socialism requires government force. A key tactic is to break and disrupt things, and then to jump in with a forced plan to fix it.
It's interesting that, in most of the discussion of medical care, the source of the heavy costs are neglected: expensive procedures and hospital care at the end of life. An office visit to an internist or family practitioner is still inexpensive.
