When is it medicine’s turn to take government money?
With the banking and auto industries bailed (or soon to be bailed) out, emergency physician Edwin Leap wonders when medicine gets its turn. After all, many hospitals are struggling under the unfunded mandate known as EMTALA, which will only worsen with rising unemployment leading to more people losing their health insurance.
Trouble is, taking government money cedes long-term control of the profession, which is what Dr. Leap truly fears:
We will all rue the day, when the US Government, arguably one of the most glorious experiments in freedom and most horrific examples of efficiency in history, decided to take over major industries in America. Especially banking.
So keep your bailout! I’d rather keep working under EMTALA as it is than have the federal government bail me out with any scheme whatsoever. In fact, I want the exact opposite. I want the government to’bail out,’ of medicine. To jump from the great airplane of health-care and pull the ripcord, floating away to distant locales so that we can do what we know how to do”¦which is take care of sick people.
He maintains that the best bailout that government can give is to leave doctors alone.
Related posts:
- Can health care be bailed out with money alone?
- Bailout for health care
- Health care myths
- Are health insurers due for a government takeover?
- Do some patients not deserve health care reform?
- Government-run health care
- Is rationing health care impossible in the United States?
{ 6 comments }
Dr Leap’s prescription is certainly an excellent one, but will never happen. The most recent US election puts the professional busybodies and control freaks in a position to grasp even more power, and they’ll never let go. After all, they take theirs off the top, and the rest of us can eat cake.
Chuck Brooks
FutureWare SCG
At this point, what’s been tried by the government isn’t working, and our role in healthcare is shrinking. It is time to start looking to break the government chains, rather than look for them to do more for us.
Realistically, the government won’t do more for us, but rather, do more to us.
“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’” Ronald Wilson Reagan
I would rather they take whatever money they take from me and burn it to ashes than use it to “help” me.
I cured my rheumatoid arthritis by myself. My board cert. rheumatologist told me I’d be back on my hands and knees in a year begging for drugs and said, ‘hip replacement.” My hands were like claws, I couldn’t walk down steps because the pain in my hips was so severe. Gone – with my protocol. I spent another 8 years in agony with my neck because no one diagnosed hypothyroid. I finally did. Tonic muscles under control now with Armour. Then last year there was fatigue so bad talking was impossible. My son was home from college. He said, “Give me the symptoms and a clue.” I gave him the symptoms and the name of Stephen Sinatra, MD. (cardiologist). Within an hour I was on d-ribose (Whole Foods). By the next day my energy was returning. Mainstream medicine is killing people. When the govt gets involved it will be a disaster. I voted for O and blame Hillary for health care fiasco.
Government has been bailing out medicine since ‘65. That is the problem. Now the same thing is going to happen to banking, the auto industry etc: government requirements that build in even more efficiency, massive cost escalation all out of proportion to results, gillions of regs that require free service to blood suckers, and on and on.
Comments on this entry are closed.