Apparently, Dr Jack Cassell has a case of the hips towards ObamaCare.
The man has a First Amendment right to speak his mind.
I figure that it’s damned decent of the old boy to post a warning — one tends to wonder how many of the folks what get paid to dink about in your vital bits are taking the Government’s heavy-handed jump into healthcare personally.
Patient: “Yeah, I’m proud I supported ObamaCare.”
Dr Kildare (firing up the Probulator 3000): “That’s nice. You may feel a pinch.”
Patient: “Is that a four-stroke engine … WOW! *pant, pant* Christ, that felt like it bumped a tonsil!”
Dr Kildare: “Mumblemumble welcometomyworld mumblemumble.”
Patient: “What?”
Dr Kildare: “Nothing. Deep breath.”
LawDog
9 thoughts on “Backlash? I got your backlash.”
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A physician friend from Iowa, resigned from the AMA when they endorsed Obamacare. He and his partners are considering going to a cash-only practice when Obamacare kicks in. He said they'll continue to accept insurance patients as long as private insurance carriers are in business.
They stopped accepting Medicare and Medicaid patients on April 1.
I'm amazed that doctors have waited so long to take this kind of action. Now we wait to see how many doctors get punished for becoming cash only businesses.
The more interesting part is the interviewee is not even a patient!!! She's just a local busybody…
The Docs at my Drs office are no longer taking new Medicare/Medicaid patients as of Mar 15th.
Cameron, Doctors have stopped seeing Medicare and Medicaid patients for some time. Many never started.
The trend is now accelerating. Practices and Partnerships can only write off so much loss. Now it's easier to do work pro bono than add all the extra cost of filing for gov't reimbursement and get diminishing payments every year.
Not a new idea. Another blog turned up this old (1986) story about how one group of doctors tried a somewhat-similar idea. In the town of Brunswick, Georgia, all the OB/GYNs began refusing care to lawyers, their families, or their employees, specifically and explicitly because of the high risk of lawsuits from such patients.
I haven't been able to find any further information about this incident. Just the one story.
And what's worse, is that Tricare pays less than Medicare. It's as Crucis says – I've had docs I work with state flat out that they'd rather deal with a charity patient than a Tricare patient, because with charity when the patient leaves the office the practice has nothing else to do. With Tricare they are legally obligated to file the claim, and then when Tricare denies it, or sends it back because the t wasn't crossed correctly, they have to spend more and more time fighting it. It costs more in office staff's time to collect than the collection itself. So while charity care doesn't bring any money into the practice, and takes up a bit of time that could be used for a paying patient, a Tricare patient actually costs the practice cold, hard cash.
And folks wonder why I'm not a fan of gov't run medical insurance.
Well, that stories like our neighbor in Navy housing who had Tricare refuse to pay for her chemotherapy. (The evil money-grubbing doctors treated her cancer anyway, and last I talked to her they were trying to work out a payment plan so her family wouldn't have to declare bankruptcy. I work with an oncology practice too, and they don't turn people away just because they didn't have insurance or huge bank accounts.)
Four-stroke? Yep. Ought to hook up a Packard straight eight, just to drive home the point (and to illustrate where med technology is headed under Obamacare).
Ken, you're a wuss. Make it a vintage Packard/Rolls-Royce Merlin! (For those not in the know, this is the 1650-cubic-inch V-16 that made the Supermarine Spitfire and P-51 Mustang WWII fighters so great.)
Better yet, go with a Pratt & Whitney R-4360, the 4360-cube, 4360-horsepower, 28-cylinder radials that powered the monster B-36 superbombers…
A close friend here is a neurosurgean. A lot of his business comes from Canada. People paying lots of their own cash to get the care that will save their life, care they can't get up there because the wait would kill them.