Scott Gottleib details the law’s damage to private practice:
A recent Physicians Foundation survey of some 20,000 U.S. doctors found that 35% described themselves as independent, down from 49% in 2012 and 62% in 2008. Once independent doctors become the exception rather than the rule, the continued advance of the ObamaCare agenda will become virtually unstoppable.
Local competition between providers, who vie to contract with health plans, is largely eliminated by these consolidated health systems. Since all health care is local, the lack of competition will soon make it much harder to implement a market-based alternative to ObamaCare. The resulting medical monopolies will make more regulation the most obvious solution to the inevitable cost and quality problems.
The key the the law’s hostility to private medical practices lies in the word “private.”
“Divide and conquer,” advised Ellsworth Toohey. “Then unite and rule.”
Gore Vidal’s Caligula put it more bluntly: “If only all of Rome had just one neck.”
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