In a meeting during 2009 by the Los Angeles Times, Dr. Day said, in justifying the growth of private treatment centers or clinics, “What we have in Canada is access to a government, state-mandated wait list. You cannot force a resident in a free and democratic community to simply wait for medical care, and outlaw their ability to extricate themselves from a waiting list.” The Canada experience provides an opportunity to predict the future of healthcare distribution in the United States.
Over the past 20-30 years, the practice of medicine and healthcare has been gradually morphing into a government-run business, often with private health insurance coverage organizations working as the intermediaries. Medical health insurance price controls provide layouts for private insurance coverage compensation preparations. Handled care, motivated and developed by government regulation, needs suppliers to obtain permission from anonymous bureaucrats in order to provide many services they consider necessary for their sufferers. Recommendations and methods, drawn up by committees and sections serving government authorities, are enforced upon suppliers, demanding them to practice according to one-size-fits-all designs or face financial or even legal penalties.
While not the simple Canadian style single-payer program, the U.S. program, especially with the introduction of the Affordable Care Act, gets us to the same place, only in a more Byzantine fashion. True, there are several payers, but the plan suppliers, as a result of the ACA, have become nothing more than openly controlled resources. The guidelines they will be permitted to offer sufferers are all designed and pre-specified by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The provider payment conditions, as well as the coding program, as has been the practice for years, will be placed to Medicare insurance compensation plans. We are seeing more and more physicians retire or slow down their practices in reaction to the modifying practice atmosphere. Many are promoting their practices to healthcare centers and becoming shift-working healthcare center workers. Still, others are losing out of all insurance coverage plans, even Medicare coverage in some instances and embarking on cash-only “concierge” healthcare methods.