He was gone for a while, but now comes roaring back with another excellent post! RangelMD.com first gives a good history lesson about TennCare, and its impending demise, then projects the lessons not learned there to the national stage:
So if ever they try and impose a nationalized health care system on the United States it is very likely to evolve in much the same way that Tenncare did. It is likely to look something like this;
1. In 2009 President Hillary Clinton will resurrect her long dead dream of nationalized government health insurance. Medicare and Medicaid will be combined and expanded into a massive program that will cover every American. It will be administered by the states and further subdivided into "managed care regions" which will act similar to the old HMOs.
It goes on, and makes me apprehensive about the future of medicine.
Is it too late for me to not take the boards and switch professions? Rangel’s scenario doesn’t sound to pleasing.
Here’s another take on TennCare, by a doctor actually practicing there. He participates in NO insurance. His typical office fee is about the same as the proposed COPAY for TennCare:
http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=17132
Complete nonparticipation in any insurance plan, including Medicare and Medicaid, lowers overhead to the point where the fees are affordable even to the working poor.