
Originally Posted by
Novaheart
Well gee, Adam. Let's just throw some crap against the wall and see if it sticks:
Why would you want the government to stay out of your bedroom, and then call the police when you see a burglar crawl through your neighbor's bedroom window? You can't have it both ways.
Bullshit.
Medicare pays for some things and not others, as does private insurance. The difference is that through elected officials we can tall Medicare what to pay for. By your definition, both ration and both interfere with your medical decisions. Of course, in both cases, if you have the cash to pay for it, you can make medical decisions in conflict with your insurance company or Medicare.
As I understand it, you are paying for a catastrophic plan right now. Soon enough, if you are lucky, you will be so old that your insurance company will send you a little packet saying, "It's been nice, enjoy Medicare, and by the way would you like to buy a gap coverage package?" Wouldn't it really have made more sense for you and the nation if you had been paying your premiums into Medicare all along?
No. Medicare is an example of how not to run a national insurance plan, because it isn't insurance, it's simply welfare, and a very stingy program, at least from the point of view of the providers. The fees paid to doctors and other providers are so low now that most doctors are not accepting new Medicare patients, and many are leaving the program entirely. The only way to ensure that doctors stay in the program is through coercion, which means that rather than just leaving the system, doctors who want to practice medicine for patients instead of for bureaucrats will end up leaving the nation. This is what happened to Britain after the NHS came about, and it's happening again.
NHS facing 'massive loss' of doctors overseas
The NHS faces “a massive potential loss” of junior doctors overseas due to plummeting morale caused by problems with training and the ongoing dispute over pensions, the British Medical Association has warned.
Dr Ben Molyneux, incoming chairman of the union’s junior doctors’ committee, said a “perfect storm” was eroding the quality of medical training which, with other problems, was resulting in a “brain drain” to countries like Australia, New Zealand and the US.
He said: “Huge numbers are going abroad after their first two years of foundation training.
“Significant numbers go every year and these numbers are increasing.
“Lots do come back but some don’t, and the risk here is there’s a brain drain to elsewhere, if we can’t retain our own workforce.”
The economic climate and the Government’s controversial health reforms had combined to create “a perfect storm for the potential erosion of high quality medical training”, he said.
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One example of problems was trainees in Kent, Surrey and Sussex being denied the chance to do the placements they wanted due to short staffing, he said.
Education and training had been “bolted on” to the Health and Social Care Act, he claimed, “and we are trying to make things fit”.
More and more “home grown” medical graduates were also failing to secure NHS jobs, he said, due to a long-term increase in medical students and a rise in foreign applicants.
He continued: “A recent BMA survey of junior doctors’ career intentions showed that half of those questioned said they were more likely to leave the NHS to work overseas after training compared to two years ago.
“This would represent a massive potential loss to the NHS.
“Continued pay freezes and the raid on doctors’ pensions will further demoralise a profession who face an intense and lengthy training programme.”
To train a medical student for five or six years, to the point they are ready for their first day’s work in hospital, costs the state about £250,000.
Dr Molyneux, a GP trainee, said morale was the lowest he had personally seen it.
“I love my job, but it’s very difficult when confronted day in, day out with another problem," he said

Originally Posted by
Novaheart
ACA is an interim solution. NSP is the objective. How do you expect it to affect you?
In other words, ACA is meant to break the system so that people will clamor to scrap it in favor of NSP. We get it. It's dishonest and despicable, but it's what we've come to expect from the left. And your other question, how I expect it to affect me, assumes that if it doesn't affect me because I'm on TriCare, then I have no right to an opinion. Unfortunately for both of us, it does affect me, and will affect my family as well.
I expect it to affect me by reducing the number of physicians available for my needs, and those of my family. TriCare has tremendous difficulty in attracting doctors who will accept its lower fees, so we have very few providers available. This means longer waiting times to see primary care providers and specialists, and it also means that the system has to make do with Physician's Assistants doing many of the jobs that MDs did. This means that the risk of misdiagnosis or other error is increased for everybody in the system. So, I can expect longer waits for poorer service, and eventually, when I retire, the private sector insurance will either be out of my price range, as costs are driven up by poor policy, or gone completely, in the ultimate act of stupidity, the enactment of NSP.
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