Government Health Care: Why it is a terrible idea

I don't think anyone would be surprised at my total disdain for Congress, Obama and their proposed Affordable Health Care for America Act. As a physician, I have a little bit of insight as to how this will affect health care, and let me just say that it isn't good.

Full disclosure, I admit that I have personal reasons too. The $848 billion dollar plan will be financed by 2 primary means: reducing medicare reimbursements and increasing taxes on the "rich". Explain to me how it is fair that the very doctors who provide health care to America will get paid less to do so with decreased reimbursement, while paying higher taxes too. This is a recipe for disaster. Any smart person with half a brain would probably think twice about going into medicine. That means standards for doctors will decrease, and your overall health care will decline as well!

Anyway, a media firestorm that erupted this week gives a perfect example on why the Affordable Health Care for America Act or any other government run plan will fail. In case you hadn't heard, an independent panel of experts called the US Preventive Services Task Force recommended the guidelines for screening mammograms be changed. The current guidelines are screening mammogram yearly starting at age 40. The new guidelines are screening mammogram every other year starting at age 50. Why did they make this recommendation? Because there are too many false positives in younger women, and it was deemed cost prohibitive to screen that early and often. Of course, this opened up insane debate on every major news service.

The interesting thing is that if the government has more control of health care, this will be the way things are run. Independent reviews will make cost-benefit analyses for all kinds of health care tests and procedures. They will set guidelines, and the government will reimburse medicare, medicaid and the proposed new public insurance option based upon these guidelines. Then, private insurers will follow suit, because the government always pays the least because they are the biggest insurer. What this means using the screening mammogram example above is that your insurance will only cover biannual screening mammograms after 50. You won't have the option to start at age 40.

It just doesn't work. The government doesn't run anything efficiently (See the proposed organizational chart above) . This new health care reform will just put more money into the pockets of the government and less into health care. For an example of government inefficiency, look no further than the Cash for Clunkers program. Edmunds determined that of the 690,000 cars sold under the program, only 125,000 of them were sold because of the deal. The other 565,000 would have been sold anyway during that time period. That means the $3 billion taxpayer dollars used to give these rebates cost the government $24,000 per extra car sold. Good work America!