Do You Like Your Personal Doctor?

Do you like your doctor?

Serious question. Do you?

If you do, you may want to rethink your support of universal health care, at least as it is coming to us courtesy of the progressives in our current federal government.

Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a practicing physician, has an indispensable article in the Wall Street Journal today that explains what is getting ready to happen to American doctors, and how these changes will affect you.

Maybe I'm in the minority (actually there's no doubt about that!) but I do like my doctor. He has a great sense of humor, talks to me in no-nonsense terms about my dietary and exercise shortcomings (and lo they are many), but is also open to my experimental ideas, some of which we've actually implemented. He's a regular guy, not an earthbound god, and he works hard for what I hope is a lot of money, but I'm not sure.

The reason I'm not sure is that being a doctor in America isn't the ticket to wealth that most people think, and certainly not as lucrative as it once way. There are too many spiraling costs to bear, many of them brought on by federal intervention into the practice of medicine in various and sundry ways. Then there's malpractice insurance which takes a huge bite out of one's finances, yet is a must in our lawsuit friendly society.

Like I said, my doctor's a good guy and he's in my corner. He's argued with my insurance carriers when they didn't want to cover a vital medication he thought necessary. (He lost, but he gave it a good try. "God save us from insurance companies," he said, but then added, "but thank God it's not the government.")

Not yet, but it's coming at us rapidly. Dr. Gottlieb's article describes how the earnings of doctors will be dramatically cut, how the new Medicare-like federal insurance option will rapidly become the predominant player in the marketplace, crowding out the private insurance companies and mandating more bureaucratic rules and procedures.

If you've ever visited the IRS or Social Security offices, then you've seen a preview of what medicine in America is going to become. A federal bureaucracy is going to be your partner in health, and something tells me that they aren't going to nearly as open-minded when I suggest that the cure for my blood pressure is going on a full-tilt Atkins' no-carb diet.

Gottlieb warns:

Doctors will consolidate into larger practices to spread overhead costs, and they'll cram more patients into tight schedules to make up in volume what's lost in margin. Visits will be shortened and new appointments harder to secure. It already takes on average 18 days to get an initial appointment with an internist, according to the American Medical Association, and as many as 30 days for specialists like obstetricians and neurologists.

Right or wrong, more doctors will close their practices to new patients, especially patients carrying lower paying insurance such as Medicaid. Some doctors will opt out of the system entirely, going "cash only." If too many doctors take this route the government could step in -- as in Canada, for example -- to effectively outlaw private-only medical practice.

If you don't like this scenario, that's too bad. To paraphrase something you've heard before, "When private physicians are outlawed, only outlaws will seek out private physicians."

There is something you can do about it. Make calls to your congressmen, write letters and tell your friends, especially those who think that compassion means we have to trash the free enterprise system and turn everything over to the government.

There is nothing particularly compassionate about the future that is coming if we do not stop it!