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There are howls of outrage coming from the liberal community in
Alberta, Canada. It seems that some doctors, desperate to protect their
patients from the overcrowded and failing socialized medical system in
their country, have set up private clinics to treat them. To circumvent
Canadian laws, which prohibit charging for medical care, they have set
up private, membership clinics where, for $2,000 a year, patients can
access well staffed and equipped clinics and avoid the long waits and
compromised care of the public system.
The leading Canadian newspaper, the Globe and Mail, reports that
“critics say that the clinics are taking physicians away from the
public system making it even harder…to find a family doctor.” David
Eggen, executive director of a group that supports the Canadian
socialized system, Friends of Medicare, said that it’s already hard to
find a family physician in Canada and that clinics like these,
springing up in several Canadian cities, could make it even harder.
It does not seem to have occurred to defenders of socialized
medicine that the system itself is causing the doctor shortage. Cuts in
medical fees, overcrowding of facilities, shortages of equipment and
space, and bureaucratic oversight have all combined to drive men and
women out of family medical practice. Now, with a critical shortage
looming, those who can afford to pay for adequate care are opting out
of the public system and, literally, taking their lives into their own
hands.
But it is illegal to make patients “have to pay a fee to gain access
to health services” that are provided free by the government system. So
patients and doctors are forming membership-only groups to avoid the
legal penalties that could potential stop them from getting or giving
the care that they need.
This is where the United States is headed. Socialism dries up the
supply of medical care and forces ever stricter rationing of the
available resources. As Margaret Thatcher famously said, “Eventually
socialism runs out of other peoples’ money.”
With the full implementation of Obamacare and its likely cuts in
physician reimbursement, more and more doctors will choose to opt out
of Medicare and charge their patients for their care. The elderly who
need specialized care will have no choice but to take out insurance,
not to fill gaps in Medicare coverage, but to overlay the system with
private coverage so they can get the care Medicare now provides to all
seniors. If you want to see a family doctor, it will be rough unless
you are paying for the care privately. And to see a specialist, at the
low reimbursement rates afforded by the program in the future, will be
well nigh impossible.
Medical care for the elderly will become like public housing or
public education in the inner city. Those who can afford to go
elsewhere will. Those who can’t will be left to fend for themselves in
overcrowded public facilities that will be, at least, free.
And then, as in Canada, liberal critics will rail, not against the
system that dried up the resources in the first place or against the
socialist rules that drove doctors out of medicine, but against the
private clinics for resources from the public sector.
By plunging our excellent medical care system into this new world of
regulation, fee cuts, and care rationing, the U.S. is going down the
disastrous road Canada has taken.
Unless we can elect a Republican majority in November and a GOP president in 2012, this is our future.
By Dick Morris And Eileen McGann
I am Independent. Feels real good. Mr Blog
Become an Independent voter it feels real good..... Being independent voter you get the best of all politics. If there was a Democrat that had a good policy for the people I can vote for that democrat, If a republican has good policy "a lot do" for the people than I can vote for that republican. If a independent has a good policy I can vote for that independent. It´s the only way to be a true American. Vote for the right person that has the best interest for the majority of the people.
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