The ObamaCare nightmare begins
Attention, doctors everywhere: If you have not read this story out of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, you should. (The Democrat-Gazette is a pay-wall site. So you’ll need to pay a fee to read the story. It’s worth it.) It will give you a glimpse of how government will reduce quality health care in the years to come.
It’s just the beginning of government determining what costs are acceptable. And it’s going to be done on the backs of care to patients.
Essentially, it outlines how government plans to use doctors to "quarterback" costs by making them financially responsible for cost overruns, unneeded tests, etc.
That may sound pretty good, but here’s what it looks like in practice.
An obstetrician in North Little Rock received a report that said he billed Medicaid $1.47 million — $49,108 more than new guidelines allow. The overages, it turned out, came not in unnecessary tests, but in new mothers needing to stay in the hospital an average of one half day longer than the government thinks they should.
Well, you don’t have to be a community organizer to know how this is going to end up. New moms are going to be hustled out of hospitals according to guidelines or else the doctor — who really has the patient in better mind than some bureaucrat — pays the price.
This whole deal is going to be bad, folks. You can see it coming.