J. Neil Schulman
@ Agorist.com
ObamaCare Blowback
I received a certified letter from my physician yesterday.
It read:
This letter will serve as notification to you that (clinic name) is withdrawing you from further treatment as of the date of this letter. You are hereby discharged from care by all of our physicians and treatment locations. … We suggest that you place yourself under the care of another physician and medical facility immediately.
My doctor was firing me as a patient? What was up? Was I dying from some disease they had failed to properly diagnose, and they were hoping I was dead before I discovered their malpractice and sued? Did the nurse who couldn’t draw blood from my arm file a grievance against me as a preemptive move? Had I failed to pay a bill?
None of the above.
I phoned the doctor’s office today. They are no longer accepting any patient who doesn’t sign up for their “Concierge Service” — a yearly fee in four figures for unlimited clinic visits.
Cash only.
No medical insurance accepted, no Medicare, total opting out from any part of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act — ObamaCare.
Welcome to the future of private medical practice in the United States.
Now in post-production: Alongside Night. Look for it later this year!
February 5, 2013 - 2:26 pm
Never fear, this is only one of many free market (underground) alternatives that will be increasingly available as time goes by.
Learn as much as you can and become responsible for your own health and wellness.
Most Americans are over medicated and see far too many doctors. One of the unintended consequences of Ovomitcare may well be a healthier and more prosperous people.
February 6, 2013 - 12:19 am
Repeal of prescription laws would make people far less dependent upon doctors, a fact I’m sure the AMA knows very well. Most of us could manage quite well with common chronic conditions being able to buy what medicine we needed without a prescription. It would be necessary to do some study, but today there are sufficient sources of information out there that many could get along seeing a doctor only when something actually “hurt” enough to require a visit. Of course this would considerably reduce their incomes, something I’m sure both the AMA and most non-specialist doctors are already well aware of.
February 6, 2013 - 11:45 am
Agreed. My stance is simple: Your life. Your body. Your health. Your business. Study, learn, accept responsibility for yourself and let no man commandeer what is yours.
February 6, 2013 - 6:33 pm
Let’s see who voted for Obama and is therefore responsible for this turn of events?
February 6, 2013 - 9:36 pm
“In truth, in the case of individuals, their actual voting is not to be taken as proof of consent, even for the time being. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, without his consent having even been asked a man finds himself environed by a government that he cannot resist; a government that forces him to pay money, render service, and forego the exercise of many of his natural rights, under peril of weighty punishments. He sees, too, that other men practice this tyranny over him by the use of the ballot. He sees further, that, if he will but use the ballot himself, he has some chance of relieving himself from this tyranny of others, by subjecting them to his own. In short, he finds himself, without his consent, so situated that, if he use the ballot, he may become a master; if he does not use it, he must become a slave. And he has no other alternative than these two. In self- defence, he attempts the former. His case is analogous to that of a man who has been forced into battle, where he must either kill others, or be killed himself. Because, to save his own life in battle, a man takes the lives of his opponents, it is not to be inferred that the battle is one of his own choosing. Neither in contests with the ballot — which is a mere substitute for a bullet — because, as his only chance of self- preservation, a man uses a ballot, is it to be inferred that the contest is one into which he voluntarily entered; that he voluntarily set up all his own natural rights, as a stake against those of others, to be lost or won by the mere power of numbers. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, in an exigency into which he had been forced by others, and in which no other means of self-defence offered, he, as a matter of necessity, used the only one that was left to him.”
–Lysander Spooner, No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority
February 7, 2013 - 11:01 am
This practice has been going on for some time. This 2008 article states it has been going on for a decade or longer: http://www.azcentral.com/business/articles/2008/07/23/20080723biz-elitedocs0724-ON.html?nclick_check=1
…while this 2012 article states that: “In 2011 the average American medical practice spent $82,975 per doctor dealing with insurers, according to the Commonwealth Fund. ”
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-11-29/is-concierge-medicine-the-future-of-health-care#p2
It seems to me the relationship between doctors and insurance companies has not been a happy one for a long time. I have heard enough frustration on the subject from my own doctor to know that it has been an ongoing problem for them. Not so sure it has a lot to do with politics per se when a medical professional is forced to waste time and money defending their judgment on their patients’ treatment to an insurance company to such a tune as the one mentioned above. Perhaps Obamacare it will help accelerate the practice at first, but that is not how this began, according to the 2008 article.