Obamacare's Next Hit: Cut Doctor Pay

Slate’s Matthew Yglesias failed to see the failure of Obamacare coming.

Laying down the marker—Obamacare implementation’s going to be great and people will love it: http://t.co/itm6J3BixD

— Matt Yglesias (@mattyglesias) July 17, 2013

While he has no credibility, Yglesias does have connections to the Obama hivemind and delivers its messages. He wants you to start hating your doctor, which is a necessary stage if you’re to lose your doctor without minding it too much. The next promise for Obamacare to break is “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.” That’s coming in January. Yglesias is using Slate to prepare the way.

Medical doctors are highly paid professionals. They earn more money—a lot more money—than your average American. What’s more, American doctors get paid more than doctors in any other country. Given how much of health care is financed either directly (Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans Affairs, public-sector workers) or indirectly (tax subsidy for employer-provided insurance) by the federal government, it’s natural to make restraining doctors’ income part of any program for making health care more affordable. So when you read stories about doctors whining that Affordable Care Act exchange plans don’t pay them enough, please throw up a little in your mouth and proceed to ignore the doctors’ complaints.

Throw up in your own mouth, Yglesias, or turn to the nearest JournoLister and toss in theirs if you must.

Talk to doctors about Obamacare and they tend to deride it as what happens when lawyers are allowed to remake a profession they don’t work in but can get rich off of. Because that’s what it is, along with being a scam to redistribute wealth and wreck the private insurance industry.

Cutting doctor pay will produce fewer doctors, but more errors, which will lead to more malpractice suits unless tort reform is enacted. A serious plan to cut medical costs will not focus on paychecks for doctors, and it certainly won’t water down medical standards as Yglesias also advocates. A serious plan would cut the lawyers out of using human error to run get-rich-quick schemes.

Ygelsias isn’t interested in that. Because he’s not a serious person.