VitalAccurateThinking

See the doctor anytime

When we get nationalized health care, we will see more of this:

"Patients enjoy same-day scheduling, routinely empty waiting rooms, appointments that linger as long as it takes to unhurriedly answer questions and access to doctors via phone and e-mail during non-office hours."

But of course, the socialists can't have that:

"The movement is nothing if not controversial. Advocates say it is a patient's right to purchase better health care and argue that the model represents a return to the way medicine was supposed to be practiced. Critics raise questions about a physician's ethical obligation to treat patients regardless of ability to pay and the further stratification of the American health-care system.

"Concierge care is like a country club for the rich," U.S. Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., said at a 2004 congressional hearing into the practice. "The danger is that if a large number of doctors choose to open up these types of practices, the health-care system will become even more inequitable than it is today."

From physicians organizations to health-policy researchers to liberal activists, they accuse concierge medicine of everything from elitism to patient coercion to an abandonment of physician obligations. The patients most hurt by the concierge-care model, they say, are those who could never afford it."

This will be interesting to watch.

posted by Jim VAT @ 8:31 AM