We are told Romneycare was the proving grounds for Obamacare. If that is so, there is much to worry about now that MA has a new law targeting doctors’ fees. From, “Health Law Treats Docs Like Villains,” by Alex Vuckovic in the Boston Herald:
As of last week, thanks to our enlightened overlords, a medical practitioner in Massachusetts must, as a condition of licensure, agree to report his or her fees to the Board of Registration in Medicine and is subject to an arbitrary limitation to any increases in those fees annually. The state is my new employer; what’s to complain about?
Centralized control is akin to industrial planning—and that usually leads to shortages, accompanyed by ever-increasing authoritarianism to try to get the results the technocrats want, but whose very policies prevent.
Think not? Vuckovic has scouted the trail:
Next, the push toward equalizing reimbursement rates across specialties by limiting the fees of specialists — which is where this legislation is inexorably taking us — will further commodify the provision of specialty medical services. It will come as no shock to savvy patients that some surgeons are, well, better than others. Amazingly, they charge and get more for their work. Good luck with that from now on. This is a bureaucrat’s dream and a patient’s nightmare in the making
Where next for the medical technocrats? Obamacare, of course:
Not a bad day’s work for a one-party state seeking to be on the cutting edge of health-care innovation! And in case the point is not clear, this will all be coming to a medical practice near you, wherever you live, courtesy of the monstrosity known as Obamacare, as early as next year.
How so? Why, the Independent Payment Advisory Board of course. IPAB is empowered to impose exactly this type of reimbursement restrictions for docs who treat Medicare patients as a way of controlling costs—and little can be done about it democratically. In fact, that was one of the primary points in the rules under which it operates rules reigns. Remember, the IPAB does not really “advise:” It dictates.
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