62. Karl Marx vs. Samuel Adams

We’ve talked about how Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements don’t cover our costs as physicians for seeing patients, and how the Independent Payment Advisory Board will be decreasing these payments even more.  That means that it will COST doctors to keep seeing these patients.  And when states increase the number of Medicaid patients thru Obamacare,  that means that doctors will be paying more and more money to care for people.  Now that Obamacare truly is the law of the land, it’s time to discuss what this administration is saying to physicians.  They are saying that patients have a RIGHT to make us PAY to take care of them.  They are saying that it’s OK to force doctors to practice against their free will.

 

Karl Marx, in his Communist Manifesto, proposed a system wherein resources would be distributed “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need”.  In other words, those who have the ability to make goods or money should have it taken from them and given to those who need it.  Contrast this with the words of one of our founding fathers, Samuel Adams (and I’ll paraphrase):  “If ye love government handouts more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”  Which quote do you think represents what America should be?

 

Obamacare is also saying to taxpayers that it is OK for the government to force us to pay for the healthcare of others.  We will have no choice but to pay additional money that we have worked hard to earn, so that people who choose not to work can have the same healthcare choices that we have.  I’m not talking about those who are truly needy here.  I’m talking about those who have chosen to be dependent on others.  From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.  I don’t know about you, but no one has a RIGHT to my skill, knowledge or money.  Not my patients, not my neighbors, and not you, Mr. President.

 

Come Jan. 1, 2014, when the healthcare law goes into full effect, I as a physician will have a very difficult decision to make.  Do I bow down to the Obamacare Manifesto, or do I stand with Samuel Adams and the “animating contest of freedom”?  Which will YOU choose?