The Shape of Things to Come
Thursday, May 12th, 2011 at
11:44 am
Wait times to see a doctor are getting longer. Fewer new doctors are being added. New regulations make insurance payments slower. This is what ObamaCare will bring us.
No, it’s not a wacky prediction or wild guess. It’s exactly what’s happening in Massachusetts under RomneyCare, of which ObamaCare is a carbon copy. It’s not a prediction; it’s an observation.
Filed under: Doug • Government • Healthcare
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Well, yeah, if the Republicans are successful in repealing the sections that work to increase the number of physicians, nurses, and other health care workers — you might have a point.
But the bill substitutes the quicker and cheaper bill payment methods of the federal government, in addition to increasing the number of new physicians, nurses, etc.
I mean, isn’t there some sort of blogger’s code about not claiming the exact opposite of what a bill does?
(See section 5301 et seq., for example)
By the way, it appears you’ve not been reading Ed Brayton’s takedowns of the repeated, continuing, continuous falsehoods that come out of a site named “StoptheACLU.”
You might want to check the accuracy of everything from that site. If Stop the ACLU says something, as Damon Runyon would have noted, it’s best to bet the truth is the opposite.
C’mon, Ed. They quote and link to the Boston Globe.
How does the legislation increase the number of doctors? By making people take pre-med? Encouraging it with government money only means we all pay that much more for health care, from a bill that is supposed to decrease costs. And what big government program, as big as this one, has ever been as cost effective as originally advertised. A very poor track record, but you are more than willing to ignore past performance…consistence (non-)performance.
If we have to legislate a faster bureaucracy, doesn’t that in itself, speak to the inefficiency?
You really do believe everything they tell you, eh? No wonder they can count on your vote.
So, Doug, who should we believe — a link to the Boston Globe, or the text of the law?
I spent a decade working health policy in Congress. I watch it closely.
Why would you doubt the text of the law?
First you disparage anything coming out of StopTheACLU until I note that they’re just quoting the Boston Globe. Then you disparage, or at least doubt, the reporting of the Boston Globe. And the Globe is just reporting the facts of what’s happening under RomneyCare; facts that are counter to its promises.
And I’m saying that, regardless of the text of the law or its writers’ intents, what is happening in Boston is consistent with other socialization experiments and there’s no reason to expect it to be any different this time.
I posted the law, Doug. You claim the law is inaccurate, based on a third-hand hearsay story that is based on . . . what?
You disparage the facts, the truth, the law of the U.S., and you’d probably spit on the flag if StoptheACLU suggested it would be fine.
If you can’t stick to the facts, don’t claim I’m disparaging anyone when I merely point out the facts to you.
The Massachusetts law, by the way, did not contain any plans to increase the number of health providers. The federal law renewed a program that has been working well for more than 20 years to do exactly that, where it is needed badly, across the U.S.
Just stick to the facts, please.
More specifically, to that Boston Globe blog:
1. So, we discover that there was much greater demand for health care than we knew — much greater suppression of doctor visits for all purposes, keeping well, fixing problems. Getting these underserved, but ill, people into the health care system greatly reduces costs to everybody in the last years of life, especially Medicare costs. In short, the plan is working.
2. The federal plan includes a section that provides for increases in general practitioners, specialists, nurses, physician’s aides, and especially clinics in underserved areas. Obama’s plan accounted for increased demand for providers. To claim that it won’t work is to deny the history of these programs on the federal side.
3. Here in Texas the wait for non-urgent care, last year, for almost all services, was 60 to 90 days. Massachusetts care has cut the time in half.
Sounds like Obamacare is a win-win-win.
We should stick to the facts, you know?
I posted the law, Doug. You claim the law is inaccurate, based on a third-hand hearsay story that is based on . . . what?
I predict that the law will not do what it intends to do based on what laws like it have always done, and what the Globe says is happening. The blog post notes that wait times have increased in almost all cases, and they’re having trouble with a doctor shortage. Those are the facts as presented by the Globe.
If you can’t stick to the facts, don’t claim I’m disparaging anyone when I merely point out the facts to you.
I have pointed the facts, and you did disparage StopTheACLU. To wit, you said:
If Stop the ACLU says something, as Damon Runyon would have noted, it’s best to bet the truth is the opposite.
When I pointed that StopTheACLU just noted with that Globe said, you had to pivot and disparage the Globe.
So, Doug, who should we believe — a link to the Boston Globe, or the text of the law?
So I’m not claiming anything; you did disparage both, even though StopTheACLU just repeated the Globe, and the Globe just reported the factual statistics.
There is nothing to “believe” about the text of a law. It does not claim anything. It just says what should be done by the government; it does not predict the future. However, past performance of similar laws do tend to predict future performance, and socialized medicine, as a general rule that is true the vast majority of the time, extends wait times due in part to doctor shortages.
The Globe notes this is happening, right on cue, in Massachusetts. To predict this will happen with ObamaCare is no great prognostication; it’s as difficult as predicting the sun will rise tomorrow.
The federal law renewed a program that has been working well for more than 20 years to do exactly that, where it is needed badly, across the U.S.
The current law works under the current conditions. When socialized medicine changes the playing field, expect the game to change, just as it has in Mass.
Getting these underserved, but ill, people into the health care system greatly reduces costs to everybody in the last years of life, especially Medicare costs. In short, the plan is working.
Only if you define “working” as potential lower Medicare costs. In the meantime, insurance premiums in Mass. are among the highest in the US. Also, wait times kill. A former NHS director in the UK died waiting for surgery in her own hospital.
The federal plan includes a section that provides for increases in general practitioners, specialists, nurses, physician’s aides, and especially clinics in underserved areas. Obama’s plan accounted for increased demand for providers. To claim that it won’t work is to deny the history of these programs on the federal side.
To claim it will work is to deny the history of socialized medicine, and to forget that changing laws changes behavior. Cutting the Medicare reimbursement rate, as they’ve done, pushes doctors out of the system. But hey, you can claim “cost cutting”.
Here in Texas the wait for non-urgent care, last year, for almost all services, was 60 to 90 days. Massachusetts care has cut the time in half.
Comparing wait times in two different states doesn’t speak at all to how RomneyCare works or doesn’t. The wait times, in most cases, have been getting longer, regardless of the new law.
Health insurance does not mean health care, especially if you can’t find a doctor.
A more stupid, hate-filled bunch I haven’t seen in a long time. I had thought Bull Conner dead.
Yes, I disparage hate-mongers and those who work against human rights everywhere, including especially that group.
Surely you do not defend them, do you?
They are inaccurate.
You claim that a program that has produced tens of thousands of physicians and nurses will now suddenly stop operating, because STACLU was ignorant of the law?
Having a doctor doesn’t mean health care if you can’t afford to get through the door. H.R. 3200 addresses both problems, finally.
I’m disparaging falsehood, Doug. You know — now — that the law goes well beyond what you thought it did, and that the law as written, and as it has worked for decades, does the opposite of what STACLU and the medical blog from the Boston Globe says.
Oh, wait a minute. The blog doesn’t blame the wait times on the Massachusetts health care law. That was an invention of the hate-mongers, anti-human rights people at STACLU.
Where did you get the idea that expanding health care was to blame? Boston’s had longer waiting times than the rest of the nation for many years, predating the health care law.
So, you have spotlighted a problem (a national problem, by the way) of having too few practitioners in many areas. H.R. 3200 addresses that problem. No Republican plan does.
So, you’re voting to keep wait times unconscionable?
Health care cost inflation ran 18% last year. That’s without the coverage of H.R. 3200. You like 18% annual inflation?
We can do better than long wait times, in America. We can do better than too few practitioners, in America. We can do better than 43 million Americans who can’t get through the doctor offices’ doors, in America.
And we should. It’s our Christian duty to fix such problems. H.R. 3200 does that.
You prefer higher rates, less service, and longer wait times? Lose-lose-lose. Not a good idea, I think.
You claim that a program that has produced tens of thousands of physicians and nurses will now suddenly stop operating, because STACLU was ignorant of the law?
You’re not reading what I’m writing, Ed. I can only figure that must be the reason you missed it when I said, “The current law works under the current conditions. When socialized medicine changes the playing field, expect the game to change, just as it has in Mass.” As the Globe noted, RomneyCare has not changed the trend in that state for longer wait times. They have continued to rise. Fewer doctors has meant less service. And insurance rates, if you look at the big picture (not just Medicare expenses or doctor visit co-pays, but general medical insurance in Mass.), are going through the roof. I detailed these already. Thus it is extremely comical when you say of me:
You prefer higher rates, less service, and longer wait times? Lose-lose-lose. Not a good idea, I think.
And yet that’s what socialized medicine did for Massachusetts. “Christian duty” indeed.
You can claim that portions of ObamaCare “will” do this or that, but I daresay similar promises were made when RomenyCare was being written. Regardless of how the Massachusetts law was written, or the intentions of its authors, it has simply not lived up to its promise in most areas. Again, this is true whenever socialized medicine is passed into law. I predict, regardless of what the law’s intentions, that it, too, will follow suit.
So, now you confess, even if backhandedly, that longer wait times is a problem of medical care, but not a unique problem of universal coverage. If that article said anywhere that there was any effect from the Massachusetts health plan, you’ll have to point it out to us. It’s not on the blog cited.
In other words, no evidence that universal coverage causes the harm you claim.
But insurance rates are climbing faster in Texas, the paragon of your anti-health care ideas — so it would stand to reason that if Massachusetts rates are not rising as fast (and historically, Massachusetts led the nation in such costs), universal coverage not only causes no harm, it may be bringing huge benefits in slowing cost inflation.
Without universal coverage, we hit 18% health care cost inflation last year. How could it get worse? That article you cite offers no hint that inflation would get worse.
You think it’s comical. We’re talking 10,000 dead people here in Texas, about half chldren.
Lower rates, universal coverage, more physicians and nurses to expand service . . . all of those are benefits by themselves. You claim that combination will increase wait times, but you don’t have any evidence that makes that causal link. Our experience in other nations is that wait times drop, ultimately, except for some specialized services.
Where does that article blame wait times on universal coverage?
Maybe more important, why do you call it “socialized medicine?” Private nsurance companies run the insurance. Private physicians deliver the care, in private clinics and private, non-government hospitals. Private pharmacies fill the prescriptions, from private pharmaceutical companies. There is, effectively, no government rationing.
So, for a classic definition of socialism, with the government owning the means of production and setting quotas on how much will be produced, your example fails completely. It’s nearly completely free-market, anti-socialist.
I wonder whether you know what socialism is? Your abuse of the term suggests no familiarity at all on your part.
The program I mentioned to increase physicians worked exactly as promised when Reagan signed the law, and it has continued to do so. There has been more demand for a bigger government program from time to time, but never has there been any failure as you now conjecture. 30 years of success . . . what makes you say it would fail now?
Was Reagan wrong? Tell us all about it.
Perhaps, but not in the way you allege here, and not from the cause you allege. You specifically said there would be physician shortages and higher wait times as a result. But the wait time problem occurs just as much in private systems, and there is a program already in place to increase the number of physicians, a program that does not accompany the Massachusetts plan, and a program so well obfuscated by program critics that you didn’t even know it was there.
If you have some links between the Massachusetts plan and greater demand for services, and links between greater demand and greater wait times, bring ’em on. If you have some links between greater health care coverage and an inherent shortage of physicians that cannot be cured by minting more physicians, let’s hear it.
But let’s not pretend that a general note on atrocious wait times has any connection to H.R. 3200, and let’s not tell fibs about the new law by pretending that significant parts of it don’t exist.
So, now you confess, even if backhandedly, that longer wait times is a problem of medical care, but not a unique problem of universal coverage. If that article said anywhere that there was any effect from the Massachusetts health plan, you’ll have to point it out to us.
You claimed RomneyCare “cut the time in half”. For a just-the-facts kind of guy you claim to be, that statement is remarkably false. Canadians have been coming down to the US for years now trying to “jump the line” so to speak and avoid the long waits up there. People, as I noted, are dying in the UK waiting for operations. Whether RomneyCare is directly or indirectly responsible for the wait time increase, it most certainly has done nothing to decrease it. Comparing to Texas is apples and oranges.
In other words, no evidence that universal coverage causes the harm you claim
And after billions of dollars, universal coverage does not fix this problem in the slightest. In the UK and in Canada, wait time is a national political issue, and one in which they spend billions and get very little, or sometimes nothing, in return. Wait times in Canada are worse than the US; that’s why so many come here. And while I can’t empirically prove that one caused the other, it’s pretty well understood that if you have fewer doctors, and a service no longer tied to price, you will have less supply and more demand, which translates into longer waits. You have nothing to back up your position, as wait times for countries with socialized medicine are simply worse.
… so it would stand to reason that if Massachusetts rates are not rising as fast (and historically, Massachusetts led the nation in such costs), universal coverage not only causes no harm, it may be bringing huge benefits in slowing cost inflation.
Is it? You haven’t claimed that. As it is, Massachusetts is still near the front of the pack in health insurance costs, even after RomneyCare.
You think it’s comical. We’re talking 10,000 dead people here in Texas, about half chldren.
C’mon, Ed, it’s you who are comical, claiming wait times and costs are lower and service is better when they clearly aren’t. The best you can hope to say is they’re not getting bad as fast (and even that claim is suspect). But that’s not what was promised, for the billions spent.
Maybe more important, why do you call it “socialized medicine?” Private nsurance companies run the insurance. Private physicians deliver the care, in private clinics and private, non-government hospitals. Private pharmacies fill the prescriptions, from private pharmaceutical companies. There is, effectively, no government rationing.
Under ObamaCare, private insurers become merely the collection agencies of the federal government, and the feds decide what coverages the insurance companies must provide. They still control what is sold, and will be the determiners of what is and isn’t covered. Rationing and socialism by any other name or sleight of hand is still rationing and socialism.
The program I mentioned to increase physicians worked exactly as promised when Reagan signed the law, and it has continued to do so.
And if you think a huge overhaul of the medical industry will not change this, you are naive.
If you have some links between greater health care coverage and an inherent shortage of physicians that cannot be cured by minting more physicians, let’s hear it.
Ah, “minting” new physicians like printing money. The law says it will do it, so by golly it will, eh? The thought that they may be required to be overworked because ObamaCare made wait time promises won’t figure at all into whether or not young, bright students will decide to become doctors?