Medical Tuesday Blog

J American Phys & Surg

Sep 9

Written by: Del Meyer
09/09/2017 12:22 PM 

Sanders: What Will His Socialist Plan Do to YOUR Medical Care?

By Jane M Orient, M.D.

There is one thing that supporters and detractors of Bernie Sanders might agree on: he seems to be honest about his convictions. He is an avowed socialist, instead of pretending to believe in a role for private insurance. Unlike Barack Obama, his answer to the question “Do you get to keep your insurance plan?” is plainly No. There won’t be any more insurance plans. Everyone will be on Medicare. 

Other questions are tougher. Do you get to keep your doctor? That depends on what you mean by YOUR doctor. You might be seeing the same person, in the same office. But he won’t be paid by you, and under Medicare “alternative” payment methodologies he won’t be paid for what he does for you. He might in fact be paid for NOT doing things for you, to meet the savings goals of the New Generation Accountable Care Organization (affectionately known as New Gen ACO) in which you will be automatically enrolled.

You shouldn’t judge a politician by his looks, but people often do. Sanders looks like Grandpa—kind and benign. The face of Medicare, however, is Acting CMS Administrator Andy Slavitt. If you were Central Casting, you would probably cast him in a role like the one he has had in real life: a Goldman Sachs banker and CEO for a UnitedHealth Group subsidiary. Such people get their positions through ruthless dedication to the corporate bottom line. What does Sanders think of him?

Medicare is today’s single payer for the elderly and disabled. All the money is funneled through government, though it is first taken from hundreds of millions of taxpayers and disbursed through private contractors called carriers. Would Sanders replace that with a purely governmental entity like the VA, the single payer for veterans? In the VA it is government bureaucrats who delay and deny care instead of corporate bureaucrats. . .

And there’s the $28 trillion question for Sanders: where does the money come from? Even if we could squeeze every last dollar out of billionaires and transform all their wealth into medical care for the masses, we don’t have 28,000 billionaires—or 28,000,000 millionaires.

And what will Sanders do about the more-than-$40 trillion in promises Medicare has already made without provision for the revenue to pay for them? What does he imagine will happen when he adds on the demands of the entire rest of the population, and removes any brakes on utilization like copays and deductibles?

Incremental socialism is already bringing the system to the point of collapse. Hawaii is proposing a response to the fact that 30 percent of physicians are already refusing to work under Medicare: forcing physicians to accept Medicare patients or lose their license. Will Sanders try to conscript physicians?

What will he do about the worsening shortages of essential drugs? One hospital reportedly told physicians there would be no morphine until the end of March. Will Sanders nationalize the pharmaceutical industry? Would that help, or make things worse?

Insurance is voluntary. Socialism is force. How much force will Sanders use to take what remains of your doctors’ liberty—and yours? He needs to tell us that, as well what he intends to use to pay for it.

Jane M. Orient, M.D. obtained her undergraduate degrees in chemistry and mathematics from the University of Arizona in Tucson, and her M.D. from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1974. She completed an internal medicine residency at Parkland Memorial Hospital and University of Arizona Affiliated Hospitals and then became an Instructor at the University of Arizona College of Medicine and a staff physician at the Tucson Veterans Administration Hospital. She has been in solo private practice since 1981 and has served as Executive Director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) since 1989.

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