Will More Doctors ‘Go Galt’ Because of Obamacare?
At the June 29, 2012 anti-Obamacare rally hosted by American For Prosperity, blogger Ari Armstrong captured this short video of Dr. Jill Vecchio explaining how Obamacare will force her to practice substandard medicine.
Pay close attention to her words, starting at 1:00:
According to the government, I can only recommend a screening mammogram for women over 50 every other year until 74, then never again. That violates the American Cancer Society guidelines … The American Cancer Society says every year after the age of 40 until the woman no longer wants to have a mammogram.
Screening mammography has been proven to decrease the number of women who die by breast cancer by 30-40% — just screening mammography. These government rules that I will have to abide by will cause me to violate my Hippocratic Oath. And I won’t do it. I will violate their guidelines every day, many times a day. As a result of that … I will be fined, I won’t be paid …
I will not be practicing medicine when this law takes effect. Neither will thousands of other physicians.
Dr. Vecchio also alluded to possible jail sentences, which could be imposed for failing to follow guidelines on the use of mandatory electronic medical records.
Watch:
Obamacare will force doctors to choose between their patients and their government paymasters. If Obamacare is not repealed, many doctors will “go Galt” and quit medicine, rather than violate their medical consciences and betray their patients’ trust.
Ask yourself: When the doctors who are willing to practice in their patients’ best interests quit medicine, what kind of doctors will remain?
And will you want them taking care of you?
many doctors will talk about quitting. far fewer will do so. i know, because i did. it takes a lot of financial planning to walk away. i walked at age 49, but it had been planned for. also, i haven’t read the wording of the regulations, but most of the talk about not being allowed to order something is, i believe, hyperbole. i believe that most can be ordered, but the patient would have to pay. i don’t know how we reached the point where “i have to pay” means “i can’t have it”, but we have.
“i don’t know how we reached the point where “i have to pay” means “i can’t have it”, but we have.”
This is what years of indoctrinating people with the principles of entitlement has wrought.
It can take a lot of financial planning … or you can just walk away from practice, as I did. Better to plan if possible, of course, so one can have a soft landing!
If any doctors leavethe nation is screwed. There is already prjected shortages beyond healthy leavels. This will stop many from evenging in to medicine deepening the problem. Where will all of that foreign talent of doctors go when not to the US? Doctors wll leave. You will go against your oath but many others will not.
Obamacare will cut back on mammograms and Obama says Republicans are waging a war on women? The audacity of mendacity.
When Obamacare first passed, the doctors in my county got together to figure out the response. Most doctors in this county will no longer accept new patients over the age of 35. The reason? Doctors already lose money on every Medicare transaction. The rates are artificially low, Medicare randomly refuses to honor payments and/or reduces them arbitrarily…all after delaying for a year or more. The theory is that the doctors will have retired before their patient base goes on Medicare, and the percentage of their Medicare patients will decline by natural mortality. That allowed them the option of staying in practice longer, if it is possible under the law. Most are now saying that it will not be.
They are keeping their current older patients as long as they are in practice. Some doctors have gone to cash only [at lower rates, and that actually works out better for their profits but fee for service will be illegal under Obamacare], and pretty much all are looking at the options for shutting down their practices when it takes effect. Most of the doctors here are old enough to retire, and probably most will.
Our hospital is not Catholic anymore, being bought by a private company [and turning into a cesspool as far as patient care is concerned, but the admin offices sure are pretty now], but a significant fraction of the country’s medical facilities are Catholic and WILL shut down rather than be forced to perform abortions. Unless there is a mass seizure and expropriation of property by the government [which is quite possible] those hospitals are gone. Unless there is indentured servitude of medical personnel, even if the government seizes them, they cannot run them.
Would you want your medical care to be provided by what is the equivalent of an inmate? And we have seen what has happened around the world when the government takes over hospitals.
Subotai Bahadur
I am not sure what she is talking about. Medicare will cover mammograms every year for all women over 40. In any case there is no such thing as any government law that a doctor cannot recommend a mammogram for anyone on whatever screening schedule one wants to use. There may be some cases where they do not pay for something but she can recommend whatever she wants. The reference to the Hippocratic oath is facile. She never took any such oath unless she graduated a century ago and feels allegience to Apollo, Asclepius, Hygieia and Panaceia.
There are good reasons to be sceptical of Obama care so no reason to just make them up.
She can quit her job but she is not doing the tazpayers or her patients any favors. No worries though there are plenty of trained debt-free docs in India, China, and Pakistan just waiting come here and take her place.
My doctor retired this year, and one of the reasons was ObamaTax. Andy spinkdok, the new ruling and recommendation by Medicare is exactly what Dr. Vecchio states above. The government is changing all the preventative healthcare rules for women, pap smears every three years instead of every year, that should increase the number of women with cervical cancer, then they will decide not to treat it, and they can reduce the population and the cost of healthcare by killing us off.
Medicare has not changed its reimbursement policy at this time. What she may be referring to is the recommendation of the USPSTF, a government appointed panel which was published in 2009. They recommended the new schedule based on anaysis of literature. The recommendation is contraversial and Medicare, most doctors, and other insurers are still sticking to the old guidlines for now as there is no firm medical consensus on the subject.
I have a problem with the USPSTF guidlines as well as they do not account enough for newer technologies aimed at improving specifity of diagnosis (digital, 3D tomography and MRI)
In no way does that justify her histrionic statement.
Overall in preventative screening there has been a reevaluation of certain precedures such as prostate screening which as currently practiced may be producing more harm than good. I happen to think that is the case for certain conditions but that should be a scientific case with insurance or government only following policy where there is a clear medical consensus on the subject.
– sell practice and now work in the pharma industry.
Smart doctors now go into preventive medicine, never to see a hospital again, and many already have to duck the gov’t strangulation – these docs pick off the patients who can pay – what doctors will be left (are left) are nice, foreign born, so-so trained,or young inexperienced physicians doing the bidding of the govt masters – and a lot of militant unionized nurses who will doing the bulk of the care – in other words, a world of medical mediocrity for a huge underclass that has not a clue how to live in a healthy way. Tip for the future: avoid getting sick – at all.
I don’t think people will be walking away so much as walking away from traditional reimbursement schemes. I am a physician in NYC and if these Draconian measures become enacted policy, no one in his or her right mind will be willing to tempt luck because running afoul of these limitless regulations becomes easy. And penalties will be levied whether it was a willful oversight or accident. What I see happening is a concierge model and fee-for-service in areas where the traffic will bear this. Already, most (if not all) of my colleagues have dropped Medicaid and many opted out of Medicare. Good luck with OblarnyKare if all they have are nurse practitioners and physician assistants providing unsupervised care.
Good luck to you if you live in what Liberals/Progressives disparage as fly-over country.
Obamacare wont stand. Roberts has booby-trapped it. I’m an Aussy even I know money bills must come from the house. Obamacare is the senates bill. If its a tax its a money bill. Roberts has set up another legal case for them. One where he and the other conservatives have a sure majority. Its a dead duck.
see this Reality Check.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyLU9-VqVxY&feature=share
My eye doctor of many years has said he will retire early because of ObamaTax. By the way, I went to a physician’s assistant for years, and she was wonderful.
My caveat with NP’s and PA’s was “unsupervised”. I’ve worked with many over the years and many are wonderful but their clinical knowledge only goes so far.
#9 Wesley Bruce
I agree with your point under our Constitution, but they beat it on a technicality.
Obamacare was totally defeated in the House. So the Senate took a budget bill that had passed the House and amended it twice. The first amendment gutted all the contents of the House bill. The second inserted the full text of Obamacare into the House bill. Technically, it was a House budget bill still. It was passed by some really shady moves under “reconciliation” and did not get to go back to the House for a vote. Article I, Section 7 was technically not violated. Just like technically, we are still a constitutional republic. Practically, it is another matter.
There is another point that throws it out, that neither the Democrats,nor Roberts wanted to go near. The bill as passed did not have a “severability clause”. They could not insert one into the shell bill without sending it back to the House for a vote, which would have killed it.
“Severability” is a statement that if part of the bill is illegal or unconstitutional, the rest still stands. Under the rules of legislative construction used by both Congress and the Courts, if there is no “severability clause”; if part of the bill is unconstitutional, the whole thing dies.
The “Mandatory Medicaid Expansion” was directly ruled unconstitutional, even in the Roberts decision.
The “Submit to My Authority” Mandate was ruled unconstitutional under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, and Roberts acknowledged this, so he himself re-defined it as a tax and voided every guarantee of liberty under the Constitution as long as Congress calls it a tax, i.e. you can go to church if you pay a tax to be determined by the atheists in Congress. You can have a jury trial, as long as you pay a tax determined by the prosecutor.
The law is unconstitutional, technically; but practically we no longer have a Constitution. And Roberts is as much an employee of Obama’s political operation as Kagan. There are other implications in this.
Subotai Bahadur
Almost a third of doctors in the UK are foreign born and trained. That’s what we can look forward to. And, of course, when we need a whole slew of new doctors you can bet immigration law (already a complete joke) will be completely ignored. And if you don’t want an Iranian-trained doctor working on you, well, you’ll just be a “racist.”
I still haven’t heard anyone address what happens to Christian Science people who don’t believe in doctors; will they be forced against their religious beliefs to pay for this? It probably doesn’t matter; look at the abortion part of it, we who are against abortion are forced to pay for them. Who takes the blame with God for that?
I love medicine….It is and was my calling, but I didn’t sign up for this. If I wanted to work for the government, I would have joined the military.
I have been an attending physician for 5 years. There is no way I could walk away now, as much as I might like too. It cost me the price of a house to become a physician. Almost $200,00 thousand dollars in debt that cannot be walked away from paralyzes a person. When I was single, with out children it was a different ballgame, but now w/ a wife, 3 kids and a mortgage, everything changes. There is now way to “Go Galt” at this point, not now. I am trapped.
I abhor what is happening to medicine, but am stuck fighting from within. Waiting for the pending financial implosion.
If all this screening were as great as they say, the patients would be willing to pay for it out of pocket. The fact is that there is a low yield for all of these tests that results in some people being “saved” through early diagnosis. Of course, it is not many, and for each “save” there are likely multiple “scares” where a biopsy is done with negative results. But the anecdotes pile up on the side of the “saves” and we all want to save someone so we continue.
But, if you ask women to pay $150-200 for a mammogram that is likely to be negative (not needed), they don’t think it is worth it. And the men that want PSA tests to be paid for by someone else evenn though it is a cheap lab test. Or their Viagra, or contraceptives that I need to pay for…just because. And the people who want me to pay to vaccinate their kids that they don’t care enough for to pay for themselves.
Sorry, I don’t buy it. Let her quit. Most of this stuff is not what it is cracked up to be. She just doesn’t want to have someone looking over her shoulder telling her that her defensive medicine may be wrong and worse than that, telling the patients that the doctor has no clothes.
I am speaking to all of the ones who keep saying if you want a test “bad enough” you will pay cash for it, some people, believe it or not, do not have the “cash” to pay for these tests, if you have the resourses to just pay out of pocket, then please feel free to do so, I rely on my employee provided insurance, which I feel very blessed to have, but the majority of people do not work in field where it is provided, or they cannot afford it, women as well as men benefit from these prevenitive tests, and most wish they could afford to go have them done