Of course the libs will blame the doctors.
Texas doctors opting out of Medicare at alarming rate
The uncertainty proved too much for Dr. Guy Culpepper, a Dallas-area family practice doctor who says he wrestled with his decision for years before opting out in March. It was, he said, the only way “he could stop getting bullied and take control of his practice.”
“You do Medicare for God and country because you lose money on it,” said Culpepper, a graduate of the University of Texas Medical School at Houston. “The only way to provide cost-effective care is outside the Medicare system, a system without constant paperwork and headaches and inadequate reimbursement.”
If you put the federal government in charge of deserts you will have a sand shortage in no time. In 1965 my father, a doctor, said that the Medicare/Medicaid system was doomed to fail, but before it did, it would drive costs through the ceiling and quality down the crapper. Unfortunately for us, his family, and his many patients he died very young in 1967.
Unfortunate for his family, yes, but actually more unfortunate the patients who needed his considerable skill which was offered on need, not offered on one's ability to pay.He used to go to rural areas to treat farmers who not only felt they couldn't afford to pay, but more so because they couldn't afford to leave their farm work undone.
Once, my mother took a call from a farmer's wife who said her husband had caught part of his arm in a combine, had cut away tissue to get it loose and was now feverish and had a bad odor. As usual, my father looked across the dinner table, nodded to me and we headed out.
I could see his mind working through the flexing of his jaw as we drove. He was planning for the worst, but hoping for the best. Once there he reached into his bag and pulled out some alcohol which he poured onto to his handkerchief which he had pulled from his suit jacket and told me to hold it over my nose. I still remember the coolness of the alcohol on that hot August evening. And the flies.
The smell coming through the alcohol soaked handkerchief made me gag as we approached the back kitchen door to the farmhouse. Before we got through the door he told the wife to call family to help hold her husband down, to boil as many pots of water as possible and collect clean sheets. My job, I was 13, was to call for an ambulance and give them the address and have the company call the hospital and tell them "possible amputation due to gangrene" was coming in and then help the wife.
My father saved the man's life, most of his arm and almost lost his practice. First the lawyers came sniffing and promising the farmer's family that they could only save the farm by suing the doctor. Next came a medical review board and on and on. My father had been right, was proved right by the county medical board, the medical review board and the courts (after he was dead). He never charged the family a penny because he knew they were living on the edge of losing everything. The farmer never tried to sue, his very elderly parents had been coerced into signing the papers placed before them to save their son's farm as they were told.
Before my father died he was told he had to change how he practiced medicine because many didn't understand the new techniques he employed, that the government was so far out of touch with innovation that they were years away from okaying new techniques and that there would be no more house calls, if only to fend off the lawyers. This was told to him by his best friend, a lawyer.
It was a different time then before the government and lawyers took over medicine. That farmer didn't seek medical attention because he was too proud to negotiate paying the bill, not because he was stupid, ignorant or stubborn. He had pride. His family didn't take handouts. He didn't miss work. That farmer was a man of respect.
Well, Medicare/Medicaid had become the law and now some 45 years later it is the vehicle that the government uses to lessen medicine through their ridiculous notion that they know how to run a medical practice. If it wasn't for the ethics of doctors who have believe in "God and country" many patients wouldn't be treated, especially the old and the indigent. They are treated by a doctor, not some bureaucrat in Washington, DC. In an ironic twist, Medicare/Medicaid has a higher turn down rate for procedures than private insurance companies. Ah, but the private insurance companies are just in it for the money while the bureaucrat is in it for the good of the people and they will tell you that from their comfortable houses bought with their comfortable salaries and their ensured employment.
They are able to tell you that over a comfortable dinner because bureaucrats don't miss a meal or go on house calls. Not even for the dying. Office hours, you know. Oh, and government rules.
God help us from more government help, especially in the area of medical care. Just like the deserts, medical practices are becoming a shortage.
UPDATE: I was asked what happened to the farmer.
The farmer recovered and went on to make himself a success. His children now live comfortably in Florida on the proceeds from selling his land to a developer. My father died at a young age from 18 hour days and a fourth heart attack. He would have had it no other way because then, in his mind, he would not have done enough to help others. Yes, while alive my father made very good money which took care of my mother for another 33 years into old age and illness. My sisters and I do not live in Florida. I still have all of my father's records. At first we were told that we had to keep them for "legal reasons." Now I keep them to remember.
