Health care reform

From Shrinkwrapped, who links to this post by Dr. Sanity:

A number of emailers have written wondering why I haven't commented on Obama's health care plans for America.

Doug Ross highlights an ad/op-ed piece by Nicolas Kristof, part of the massive PR campaign in the Age of Obama to make socialized medicine palatable to the American public. Kristof calls people like me "scaremongers;" and defiantly says, "This time we won't scare." But he doesn't have to worry.

I'm done.

My entire professional life as a physician and psychiatrist I have been exceptionally vocal about the prospect of government medicine here in the US. I have given impassioned speeches (when I was younger); written essays in medical journals and elsewhere; and talked until I am blue in the face to anyone and everyone about the horrors of socialized medicine and government interference in the health care system of this country. Once it would have seemed impossible that I would ever want to quit medicine; to stop practicing psychiatry.

I have watched with dismay as every year we have inched closer and closer to the Democrats and the left's goals; goals which I firmly believe will completely destroy American medicine. I have watched up close and personal the utter soul-destroying consequences to both patients and doctors alike, of the pervasive cultural collectivist and looter thinking in my specialty. Every time this madness is killed, it just doesn't stay dead. Like some kind of putrefying zombie, the left just keeps resurrecting it. Logic doesn't matter. Facts don't matter. [emphasis added]

Let's face it. To the zombies of the left, reality doesn't matter. With President Postmodern in office, aided and abetted by zombie hordes in Congress; why should I pretend anymore that it does?

This time around, I JUST DON'T CARE ANYMORE. If that's what people want, so be it.

I'm done. If Congress passes Obama's destructive zombie health plan in any form, I quit.

I will simply not practice medicine anymore. I will take my psychiatry books and my years of experience and do something else. I used to wait tables when I was in college. It's an honest living and Obama isn't interested for the time being in nationalizing restaurants--yet. ...

Read the rest here.

(Credit: Townhall.com)

As ShrinkWrapped notes:

... A non-trivial percentage of Medical Doctors, often including the "best and the brightest" have no interest in becoming employees of the Federal Bureaucracy, with work rules, fees, and treatments determined by a set of Washington Bureaucrats who have no idea what clinical medicine entails.
...
A final point: I am tired of being told that "rich" Doctors make too much money and should sacrifice so that everyone can have access to universal health care, ie access to my expertise at a non-market price. (If I'm so rich why do I drive a Honda with 135,000 miles and my wife drives a Honda with 150,000 miles, instead of a new Mercedes or Lexus? It is not because we love driving cars that require a lot of maintenance.) Medicare, the model for government run health care, has cut compensation for Doctors by ~30% in the last decade, with greater cuts sure to follow. My compensation from Medicare has been cut an additional 8% because a year ago I had to hire a billing service (who takes the aforementioned 8%) because Medicare had become so adept as finding ways to avoid paying my bills. I stopped my involvement on any insurance panels many years ago and as of last year will not accept another Medicare patient. I don't care if you think I am selfish, over-value my time and expertise, or any of the other comments that have come my way since this debate started. Like Dr. Sanity, I no longer care; if the country wants government run health care, welcome to it and know that I will not be a part of it. ...

We are about to destroy our nation's health care system, likely along with all the life-saving innovation that it produces. Unless you somehow believe that big, intrusive government and their legions of bureaucrats will somehow be more efficient, less wasteful, and more innovative than the less-than-perfect system we have now.

(Credit: Townhall.com)

As the saying goes, if you think health care is expensive now, just wait till it's free.