Dear Doctor: You’re fired

I am not a big fan of Donald Trump’s TV show known as The Apprentice, nor have I actually sat listening to the business spoof all the way through, but because of the commercials which advertise the program I am familiar with the ominous words shouted out by the dramatic host Trump, “You’re fired.”
Recently our federal government, now under the leadership of the Obama administration, fired General Motors’ chairman and chief executive Rick Wagoner. As The Chicago Tribune put it that move was “part of a sweeping plan to reshape the American auto industry and extend additional money to GM and Chrysler to give them more time to restructure.” Part of the reshaping process will be an “auto czar.”
Another brainstorm of the Obama administration is a “sweeping plan to reshape the American” medical care delivery system, as they move to nationalize the country’s health care and set up the bureaucracy to micro-manage every step that your doctor takes in trying to improve on your state of physical and emotional well being.
We have already tasted the bitter pill of bureaucratic medicine over the past twenty-five years with insurance company managed care organizations known as the HMOs. As the years have passed our hospitalization premiums have had an insidious rise while the HMOs have siphoned off 25% of the dollars spent on healthcare to run their medical administrators’ multilayered system.
If and when Obama succeeds in a government takeover of healthcare in the country, there will eventually be a rude awakening when the bills begin to arrive at the Congressional Budget office. Just as the makers of Medicare underestimated the price of that program ($66 billion in 1990 vs. the estimate of $9 billion), so too they will have fallen short of the actual cost of socialized medicine. When they do realize the price, tax increases, rationing and limited access to care will ensue and sweeping regulations regarding how and when your physician manages your care will be put into law. If your primary care physician, a government employee, puts your welfare above those regulations he or she will receive a letter from a Washington, DC healthcare czar saying, “Dear doctor: You’re fired.”