Coverage Is Not Health Care

A California breast cancer surgeon working in a rural area explains how her practice was destroyed by government run health care. Here are some excerpts:

Currently, Medicaid expenditure per enrollee is nearly $7,000 per year. This high cost “health plan” gives recipients access to long wait times for fewer doctors, guaranteeing little ability to make healthcare decisions for themselves and their families. Arbitrary decisions made by government employees—nearly 6,000 in California alone—overrule recommendations made by doctors and nurses sitting beside their patients in exam rooms across the state.

Medicaid’s astonishing administrative costs compound the problem. According to 2005 data from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, over 31% of every dollar spent by Medicaid did nothing to provide medical treatment.

...I sustained a personal and professional loss when I was forced to stop providing services as the only breast cancer surgery specialist in a 70-mile radius in central California who still accepted Medi-Cal. I could no longer afford the $10,000-$15,000 monthly hemorrhage related to reimbursement so low it would be cheaper to close my office doors.

My own loss is nothing compared with what the women who will be diagnosed with breast cancer in my community will face. “Coverage” with a government-funded “insurance plan” for them offers no coverage, after all.

(Via Health Care BS.)