In response to an Illinois Review op-ed about ObamaCare, a retired doctor, Alan M. Fisher, MD., shared a grim prognosis of America's healthcare future -
...I practiced Ob/Gyn for 38 years before retiring. In the last year of my practice, when my patient composition was largely medicare, medicaid, and Tricare (military), I did not take home a paycheck for 4 months! I could not even meet overhead expenses. Fortunately, I was working only 60-65 hours a week! (In the "good ole' days, my work week usually averaged 80-120 hours)
With shrinking numbers of physicians, increasing patient loads, decreasing reimbursements, and escalating burden of mountainous paperwork (someone has to enter the data in the physician's office), more and more physicians will abdicate dreams of a private practice and join an HMO or similar arrangement with fixed hours and salaries.
Gone will be the days of personal contact with your physician, but more importantly, there will decreased productivity from the dwindling numbers of physicians. We will slowly move to a system like in England: rationed health care, non-medical panels who determine who receives treatments, and a two tiered system where the rich receive the best health care, and the rest of us wait.
Anyone who has been in the Military service as a physician (VietNam, and Desert Storm -reserves-, and also practiced years in the private setting, knows of what I speak.
Beware dear friends! I am afraid for our grandkids!
