Here is a simpler question: How can something as broken as our federal government have any hope of "fixing" anything, let alone something as complex as health care? Our system is not set up for this kind of undertaking. They need to set rules, and then enforce them. Nothing more. The government should never be in charge of taking money and doling it back out, because they will always find other uses for the funds than the ones they were originally intended and it will always lead to problems -- in our case, the bast*rds running everything into the ground.
While I agree with you 100%, it's too late--now that they've got their finger in it, they're not pulling them back out. One thing that gets lost in all of this is it isn't just physicians affected by this--on the hospital side, it's also the phlebotomist that draws blood, the nurse taking care of the patient on the floor, even the housekeepers that keep the place clean and the maintenance folks who keep it running. They get paid out of this pool of money. On the clinic side, more than half of what we get paid goes to our nursing and reception staff, and to supplies used, which we cannot bill separately for on medicare patients--it's bundled into the fee, rent, electricity, etc.
All I know is, I'm going to be paying out more and have less covered :mad2: I'm really afraid our quality of care is going to really suffer.