Professional Series: Thirty Year General Practitioner
The professional series is an opportunity to hear from experienced people in industries related to current events. Thank you to Dr. R for providing his insight gained from thirty years as a primary care physician.
We have many legitimate concerns about the new health care legislation or so called "Obamacare". The first major concern is cost. Our country is currently running staggering debt and deficit that has expanded in historic fashion during the first year of President Obama's administration. We are rapidly moving in the direction of Greece or some third world countries whose deficits have led to printing money and hyperinflation. The projected cost of this new legislation will very likely underestimate by a factor of ten the true cost to the country. The original estimates from 1967 for what Medicare would cost by 1990 was $12B, the actual cost was $110B. Medicare typically only covers a fraction of our population (those over 65) so imagine the disaster of such a miscalculation when covering a much larger portion of the population. Our second major concern is the potential for rationing of care. The country now faces a significant shortage of primary care physicians especially in our more rural areas. Many of these current physicians are nearing retirement age with no relief on the immediate horizon. If we add 30 million newly insured patients with no growth in the physician supply side, it is obvious that access to care for those currently insured will go down. It is also typical of government run programs to begin limiting or rationing care as the only way to meet a finite budget over time. The current private insurance companies will not be able to compete over time with government supported competition that has access to tax payers money and can undercut the for profit competition. This ultimately leads to a bloated government behemoth with no incentive to improve efficiency or quality of care. Also, the "no pre-existing" condition stipulation in the new law will allow people to pay a fine rather than buy insurance (the fine is less than the cost of insurance annually) and wait to purchase insurance while hospitalized. This can only lead to higher premiums for those responsible enough to purchase their health insurance ahead of time.
The third major concern is that capitalism is the engine of ingenuity and innovation. Without the incentive of the free market we will see service and access decrease, and the pharmaceutical companies will have little incentive to invest millions of dollars into research to allow new treatment for human conditions ranging from resistant bacterial infections, cancer, degenerative diseases etc.
