Healthcare fiasco

I couldn't say it better myself, so I won't. From James Quinn, April 5,2010 from Market Oracle:

'...It is clear that prices for all forms of healthcare will be going up. At least we can be sure that services levels and care will decline while wait times for service go up. A survey in the New England Journal of Medicine reports that 46% of doctors may give up their practice in the wake of this bill. There is no doubt that many doctors will choose to shrink their patient loads or retire. In Massachusetts, after the passage of Romneycare, the wait to see a primary-care physician increased from 33 to 52 days. Surely adding 159 new programs, thousands of new rules and regulations, and a boatload of government bureaucrats will improve healthcare for all. According to a recent report by the Association of American Medical Colleges:

• There are currently 700,000 doctors in the U.S. today. That is one doctor for every 450 people.
• With the rapidly aging population, the need for doctors would have been 860,000 by 2025.
• With the passage of universal healthcare, the need will be 910,000 by 2025.
• The number of people graduating from Medical school has been flat at 16,000 per year since 1980.
• The supply of doctors will only be 750,000 in 2025.
• Approximately 53% of all the doctors in the US are over 50 years old.
• Only 1% of doctors under 35 are in General Practice, while 47% of those over 50 years old are in General Practice.

Doctors will face greater workloads, lower reimbursements and still be subject to frivolous lawsuits by ambulance chasers, as the Democrats surprisingly chose not to address medical malpractice lawsuits. The fact that 96% of the contributions from the Trial Lawyers of America go to the Democratic Party couldn’t have had an impact on Democrats not addressing this issue in a 2,400 page “reform” bill. Despite the future doctor shortage, higher premiums, longer wait times, more paperwork, and boards of bureaucrats deciding your treatment, at least you have the comfort of knowing the IRS will be enforcing the 2,400 pages of rules and regulations with threats of fines and imprisonment. The IRS is well known for their extreme competence and ability to enforce rules and regulations. There are already 100,000 pencil pushing, mouth breathing thugs occupying the offices of the IRS. They are so efficient in their existing endeavors that it is estimated that they have somehow not collected $354 billion of taxes that they are owed. They now have the green light to hire 16,500 more hooligan enforcement agents to crack skulls if you fail to purchase government healthcare. Thomas Sowell sums up the fantasy that only a liberal intellectual could believe:

“It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it.”' '