Obamacare

[AA|FCB|DOC]

How do you believe it will affect the whole healthcare process? Do you see it being a radical change or a slight one? How do you think it will affect the pay for physicians and nurses in the United States?

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[TRN1983]

How do you believe it will affect the whole healthcare process? Do you see it being a radical change or a slight one? How do you think it will affect the pay for physicians and nurses in the United States?

It should be a radical change. They pretend that the single payer system is intended to be a "public option" that competes with private healthcare, but it would appear that it will eventually push all private insurance out of the picture. From that point on, the Gov't will determine treatment and payment. I don't know if it was a huge blunder, or a slip-up, but Obama has even been quoted (I heard the audio clip) as saying that (I'm paraphrashing here) they won't be able to eliminate the private insurance systems immediately.

Initially, Physicians are more likely to get nailed with reimbursement while Nurse salaries go up. However, as nurse salaries go up and physicians go down, you can imagine what that means for nurses. The nursing unions are being exceedingly naive in this process. All I see is nurses primarily complaining about the difference in pay between an MD and a nurse, so Obama is dangling a bone in front of their face giving them the option for autonomoy and increased salaries. However, when Physician pay is cut that will cause the nurses salaries to eventually take a big hit. If you look at the salary for nurses in any socialized system, they make a HUGE amount less than nurses in the US. Basically, proportionately, the gap in pay between nurses and doctors didn't change. Both just went down.

Personally, I love the idea of everyone being covered medically. But, I'm very averse to the idea of the Federal gov't expanding their power to this degree and effectively taking both the physician and the patient out of the treatment plan. I think history should allow everybody in a free nation to realize one single thing, and that's: you can't trust the government to have you best interests in mind.

 

[LeemerDO]

Right now, private insurance take their cues from Medicare when it comes to reimbursement. Frankly, in their view, why would they want to pay anymore than what the government is willing to pay.
Hence, when reimbursements go down, insurance follows.
Enter this goliath called the Public Plan, entering on the premise of not only being, available to everyone, but also "cheaper" most likely at our expense, the doctors through convoluted and screw loose billing schedules, but definitely the taxpayer.
Insurance can only be undercut by the federal government so low before the income vs expense ratio becomes unsustainable.
Once they go out of business...Single Payer prevails.

So yeah, Obama can say you can keep your doctor if you like him...for now, as long as insurance turns a profit. However what patients need to understand is WHEN they finally go under, how are they going to convince their doctor to keep them as a patient when they're finally converted to the public plan?
With as many red flags and red tape that apparently is attached to all aspects of health care in this bill, you're gonna have to practically write an entire book of claims and justification letters backed by probably some EBM crap just to have a damn antibiotic written for a patient.
This thing passes, then it's time instead opt out and convert to cash only practice.