Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Obamacare Draws Boos from Doctors

It seems that doctors might not be as onboard with Obamacare as he might think.

The boos erupted when Obama told the doctors in Chicago he wouldn't try to help them win their top legislative priority — limits on jury damages in medical malpractice cases.

But what could they expect? If Obama announced support for malpractice limits, that would set trial lawyers and unions — major supporters of Democratic candidates — on the attack. Not to mention consumer groups.

Every other group in the health care debate has a wish list and a top priority. Insurers don't want competition from the government. Employers don't want to be told they have to offer medical coverage to their workers. Hospitals want to stave off Medicare cuts. Drug companies want to charge what the market will bear.

Yup one thing about healthcare is that you have to throw one powerful group or another under the bus in order for Obamacare to succeed. We either cut doctors pay, add millions in new costs to small businesses, reduce some hospitals financial viability, or cut off the innovation coming from our drug sector.

Plus we might still have to pay $1.5 trillion extra over the next 10 years in order to get these 46 million people insured. Actually if we didn't blow $700 billion on that worthless stimulus bill we would be most of the way to the goal. Well, the battle will be epic but I would be willing to bet the result will be luke-warm and half-assed like the stimulus bill.

Also what the hell is the big rush to get this thing done by August? With Iran and North Korea getting huge on the world stage we should put this off until next year. I think the idea of a democratic Iran and a North Korea free of nukes is much more important then messing around with something that can easily wait until the economy is getting better.

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