printThe bloggers at the Washington Post remind me of the pinheads behind the sort of “scientific” research that is often, small mercies, spoofed in the news. You know the kind. A controlled study found that men were more attracted to older women when the women were better looking than their younger counterparts. (Howard Stern before Sirius once read this “discovery” on air.)
The latest ObamaCare-related research revealed at WaPo concerns the unwillingness of doctors to be conscripted into the Gulag of ObamaCare.
The findings were published this afternoon in the journal Health Affairs. Accordingly, a state-by-state survey, looking at doctors’ willingness to accept Medicaid patients, found that “more than three in ten doctors – 31 percent – said no,” they would not be accepting new Medicaid patients.
The WaPo’s wide-eyed bloggers are shocked—shocked, I tell you—over this unintuitive outcome.
OMG.
That could mean that the states with the highest likelihood of expanding Medicaid might be those with the lower reimbursement rates – and fewer doctors willing to accept these patients by proxy.
Another Alice-in-Wonderland moment: California has a problem (really!!!). “1.8 million residents are expected to gain coverage – but fewer than 60 percent of providers accept new patients in the program.”
The WaPo’s brilliant conclusion: “Prior evidence suggests that physicians’ acceptance of Medicaid patients will increase as Medicaid payment rates increase.”
You don’t say!
WaPo, of course, is statism and cretinism personified. The solution to the lack of will to work for free: The money pot will provideth.
Not to worry. The Affordable Care Act provisions have it covered, the WaPo assures its readers. “The law increases Medicaid reimbursements for primary care doctors to match those of Medicare providers.”
As I said, it’s all in the money pot.
Since, of course, there is no bottomless money pot, interventionism invariably leads to socialization of the means of production. In the case of the physician caught in the maelstrom of ObamaCare, expect the doctor to be slowly conscripted in the service of those who claim his services for free.