If you’ve been to the doctor lately, you know our healthcare system is in decline. Although the profession of medicine can do things today we couldn’t imagine fifty years ago, the practice of delivering these advances in medical treatment is declining.
Many of the changes we are experiencing today in doctors’ offices are the result of shifts in who is employing your doctor. When I went into practice in 1984, most doctors were self-employed, or at least worked for other doctors. Today about 70% of all physicians are employed by hospitals, large healthcare systems, or the government. In other words, they don’t get to decide on their own what’s best for their patients.
This change is not happening by chance. It’s all part of the government’s plan to someday control the delivery of all healthcare. The more doctors are employed by hospitals, large healthcare systems, and the government, the more the government can determine what they can and can’t do and therefore what they spend and don’t spend on healthcare. The ultimate control of all healthcare expenditures is the goal – and that’s called socialized medicine.
Grace-Marie Turner, writing for Galen.org, tells us other ways the progressive government of the Biden Administration is moving in this direction. She says, “The Biden administration is continuing the march toward a universal, government-run health care system, both by chipping away at the private health sector and ushering more and more people into government programs. The latest: President Biden announced on Tuesday he’s giving legal status to undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens and their children. At least 500,000 are expected to qualify.
It’s hard to understand how this is legal since there will be significant costs associated with their new eligibility for entitlement programs, including ACA and Medicaid coverage—spending that should require congressional approval. Lawsuits will ensue. This follows the controversial “Dreamers” program the Obama administration created in 2012 that gave legal status—and entitlement eligibility—to adults who were brought into the U.S. illegally as children.”
She says The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services plans to award $500 million in grants over the next five years to “navigator” programs across the country. A creation of Obamacare, navigators are paid by government to assist consumers in signing up for health coverage. The problem: We already have a network of nearly a million private insurance agents that have decades of knowledge and experience in helping clients find the best health coverage for their needs and pocketbooks. It’s very hard for them to compete with much-less-experienced navigators backed by $500 million in taxpayer dollars.
She also tells us the Biden administration is undermining the competitive, consumer-friendly model of Medicare’s prescription drug benefit. It is making changes to Part D that are degrading the program, leading to fewer plan choices, fewer drugs covered, and premiums which are expected to increase by more than 20% next year.
And they are attacking Medicare Advantage plans in ways designed to discourage seniors from enrolling in these private, competing health plans that more than 30 million seniors have voluntarily chosen for lower costs and better benefits. But the number of options is shrinking as plans exit the program, citing Biden administration regulatory demands and financial pressures.
The result of these changes will be: Fewer choices. Higher costs. More government control. More government spending.
For more on how the government is expanding its control of the American healthcare system, read my recent blog The ObamaCare Subsidy Fraud.
