Obama Casually Slanders Doctors
Which isn’t surprising. In order to sell their government solutions to everything socialists usually do have to demonize someone. Obama attacking doctors isn’t terribly unlike the Bolsheviks attacking the bourgeois capitalists as the common enemy for their revolution.
…Obama offered this example of how doctors make decisions under the current system instead of doing what’s in their patients’ best interests:
Right now, doctors a lot of times are forced to make decisions based on the fee payment schedule that’s out there. So if they’re looking and you come in and you’ve got a bad sore throat or your child has a bad sore throat or has repeated sore throats, the doctor may look at the reimbursement system and say to himself, “You know what? I make a lot more money if I take this kid’s tonsils out.”
Does Obama really think pediatricians knowingly order unnecessary tonsillectomies in order to “make a lot more money?” Isn’t this a rather casual slander of a lot of doctors? And in any case, is this what’s driving up health-care costs? It’s probably as likely health-care costs are high because hospitals have too many vice presidents for government relations making $300,000 a year. But I wouldn’t think it appropriate for the president to single them out for attack either.
Painting in such broad strokes is eminently unfair, no doubt, but no profession is without its bad apples. I’m sure that there are, in fact, unethical doctors who pad their billing with unnecessary procedures and tests. But does Obama really think that the government is the solution to that?
Look at Medicare, for instance. According to the Manhattan Institute as much as 10% of total Medicare expenditures go to fraud and waste, a total of about $30 billion of our tax dollars each year. There may be fraud and abuse in the private health care sector now, but it’s clear that government which struggles with its own fraud and waste is no antidote for it.
