How to convince doctors to accept health reform

Stuff their mouths with gold.

Or so says Britain’s health minister when asked how he got doctors to buy into the UK’s National Health Service.

One way to overcome dissent is to buy off the opposition, and this is what Jacob Hacker is alluding to in his piece promoting an influx of dollars to push health reform forwardÂ (via Maggie Mahar) at all costs. He argues for “temporarily throwing fiscal caution to the wind,” and although “the idea of spiking the deficit now may seem frightening, but it’s a lot better than the alternative–and it could actually make it easier to bring universal health care to America.”

A plausible scenario is one where primary care doctors are offered salaried positions in excess of $200,000 – similar numbers to their equivalents in the UK – in order to support a national public-based health reform plan. Perhaps something akin to a Medicare for all.

Once doctors are in the fold supporting Medicare as the dominant insurer, reimbursements will then be ratcheted down to control costs, and there will be nothing physicians can do about it.

There is no doubt that many doctors will take the $200,000 salary, and indeed, it will be a marked short-term improvement from the current situation.Â

But as physicians in the UK are finding out, that will place you at the whims of the government, who will use their newfound power over the medical profession to control long term spending.Â