When I turn on the evening news, I feel like I am back in my office. Democrats refer to the jihad Republicans are waging and members of the House call names at certain Senators.
I FEEL LIKE I AM SITTING BETWEEN A DIVORCING HUSBAND AND WIFE FIGHTING OVER WHO GETS THE KIDS.
Never in my 55 years have I heard such vitriolic speech between the two very necessary political parties in our country.
Obamacare has hit a deep nerve with both parties and most of the country. I will be the first to admit that I hate Obamacare. My five partners and I have been feeling the intense squeeze by insurance companies who are getting pressured by the government. We feel like medicine is becoming boiler plate and there’s little we can do.
Our overhead has tripled while reimbursements have nose-dived. I have never met a physician who could accept more than 25% Medicaid patients to his practice for the simple reason that Medicaid doesn’t pay enough to cover all of the expenses. If 100% of patients came from government insurance, doctors couldn’t keep their doors open.
And it gets worse because whenever someone who neither understands medicine nor has the heart to care for the sick, purposes to control medicine, the quality plummets. That is exactly what will happen over the next years if Obamacare takes hold. Doctors will leave in droves because the government imposes so many restrictions on us that we cannot do what we are trained to do.
But this isn’t the first time the Democrats and Republicans have disagreed so intensely. We had Vietnam, the Cold War, Roe vs. Wade, and more. But never have we been at a place where the President of the United States stands on national television and name-calls the opposite party.
This is the stuff of divorce courts, football fields, and school playgrounds. When did politicians—the President—lose diplomacy and negotiation? With such enormous issues at stake, how dare our leaders stand like school children with their arms folded across their chests and refuse to return to the table and works things out?
I think that there is one glaring reason: no one knows Obamacare well enough to make reasonable changes because the whole bill is such a mess. Perhaps, they all bluff because they are scared to admit that no one really understands what’s going on.
How sad that we, who are the epicenter of excellent medical care in the world, are being manipulated by those who have never even touched a patient. Maybe if they had the heart to stand over a dying child and try to figure out what to do next, they might unfold their arms and act like a civil adult and less like an angry spouse who just wants to get back at his wife.
