Visited the orthopedist today with someone who recently decided, in part because of uncertainty about the future of the medical system, to go ahead with elective joint-replacement surgery. The orthopedist said that he had three other patients today who want to do the same thing and expressed the same reason. His surgical schedule is booked into January. I suspect we will start to hear many more such anecdotes.
10 thoughts on “Medical Panic?”
Comments are closed.
One think I am learning though this entire fiasco is that the planners never anticipated the reaction of intelligent people
Well, Bill, maybe they’ve never met any.
Oh, snap!
I am retired, and I know number of people who are accelerating medical procedures because there is a distinct possibility that soon they will not be available in this country. Unless you are connected, of course.
Subotai Bahadur
Bill…”One think I am learning though this entire fiasco is that the planners never anticipated the reaction of intelligent people”
Fancy what a game of chess would be if all the chessman had passions and intellects, more or less small and cunning; if you were not only uncertain about your adversary’s men, but a little uncertain also about your own . . . You would be especially likely to be beaten if you depneded arrogantly on your mathematical imagination, and regarded your passionate pieces with contempt. Yet this imaginary chess is easy compared with a game man has to play against his fellow-men with other fellow-men for instruments.
George Eliot wrote the above in 1866 (in her novel Felix Holt, the Radical)….if Barack Obama and others of his type were to come across this passage, I don’t think they’d have any comprehension at all of what she was talking about.
The last month of the year is always busy for surgeons because people have met their deductible (prior to Obamacare) and want the surgery in this calendar year. I can only imagine what it will be like this year.
Yep, a friend is having both knees replaced during December. They need to be done eventually, but the procedures were accelerated for the same reasons stated above. I sincerely doubt that the people most committed to the ACA regime much cared that such reactions would occur. In the long run the masses would accept their new strictures. If physicians flee their profession, well, just another target to loudly denounce. The blame always lies elsewhere, so many enemies to choose from…
Tangentially, speaking of panic, I wonder if, or to what extent, 0care will eventually affect the economy and stock market. If healthcare truly accounts for one sixth of the US economy and the market abhors uncertainty….
I think that it will have a horrendous effect if it is not repealed. It is not only the health insurance aspect. The insurance industry as a whole is interconnected and will be affected negatively by the loss. Further, the financial reserves held by the insurance industry are frequently in the form of bonds, corporate or government. No reserves, no bond purchases. Corporate financing not available. Further, if government bonds are not purchased, then we will be forced to rely even more on Federal Reserve fiat money purchases. We are approaching the limit of that, and a currency collapse is entirely possible.
Add to that the rule by decree nature of the implementation of Obamacare, and now the beginning of the formal removal of the checks and balances in the Senate, and if you are a foreign investor the economic concept of “regime risk” comes more to the forefront. If they want to act like Venezuela, they will have the economy of Venezuela.
Subotai Bahadur
“If physicians flee their profession, well, just another target to loudly denounce. The blame always lies elsewhere, so many enemies to choose from…”
It has already begun at such monuments to leftist wisdom as Huffington Post.