Chuck Wilder interviews Dr Richard Amerling President of the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), and Director of the Outpatient Dialysis at Beth Israel Medical Center. Dr. Amerling is the author of Physician’s Declaration of Independence.”ObamaCare Endgame: Medicaid for All”
Here are the interviews: LINK
Wilder also interviews other opinion makers, Seton Motley President of Less Government, Editor in Chief StopNetRegulation.org A publication of the Center for Individual Freedom. "House Votes this Week to Reverse FCC Net Neutrality Power Grab" (www. lessgovernment.org) ................................. Jim Gilchrist Founder and President of the Minuteman Project, Jim is a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps and recipient of the Purple Heart award for wounds sustained while serving with an infantry unit in Vietnam, "A look at the report:Federal Agents Told to Reduce Border Arrests, Arizona Sheriff Says" (http://www.minutemanproject.com/) ............................... Richard Amerling, MD is a nephrologists practicing in New York City. He is an Associate Professor of clinical medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, and the Director of Outpatient Dialysis at the Beth Israel Medical Center. He is Director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. Dr. Amerling is the author of the Physicians' Declaration of Independence."ObamaCare Endgame: Medicaid for All" (http://www.aapsonline.org/medicare/doi.htm). ............................Katharine DeBrecht Author and staff writer for the Tea Party Review
Too many physicians endorse the “single payer” concept. Some are legitimately frustrated by the increasing difficulty in getting paid by private insurance companies and so called “health maintenance organizations.” My response is, “What if the single payer is Medicaid?” Unless ObamaCare is defeated in the Supreme Court, or defunded/repealed by Congress, we may soon be in a position to answer that question.
It has become clear that a major goal of ObamaCare is massive expansion of Medicaid. It mandates that states increase Medicaid eligibility, and provides temporary funding to this end. Medicaid rolls in many states have already swelled due to the prolonged recession and high unemployment. According to CNNMoney: “Strapped states are scrambling to address Medicaid's ballooning costs before the federal government cuts back a critical source of funding this week. Medicaid is one of state's costliest burdens. And the weak economy swelled the rolls to record numbers. Nearly 49 million people -- or almost one in six Americans -- were covered by the safety net at the end of 2009, the latest figures available
Furthermore, federal control of private health insurance and the bureaucratization of private medicine under ObamaCare will lead all private insurance down towards Medicare and Medicaid levels.
Medicaid is an excellent example of a failed government program. Even a cursory look at Medicaid should convince any rational person that government has no business being involved with health care. It was created in 1965-66 as an “add-on” to Medicare, the major entitlement passed as part of the Great Society under LBJ. While Medicare bribed physicians with “usual, customary, and reasonable” reimbursement (and a long-forgotten pledge not to interfere with care), Medicaid payments to physicians were, from the outset, pathetic. Thus, Medicaid was set up as a third tier system; one that would relegate its beneficiaries to hospital emergency rooms and clinics, rather than to private medical offices. Medicaid payments to physicians to this date in most states are well below the cost of care. The minimal participation of private physicians in the Medicaid program, which was by design, doomed the program to provide very expensive, fragmented, low quality care. How can a program that virtually excludes private physicians now be expanded and hope to succeed? Obviously, it cannot.
ObamaCare mandates an increase in Medicaid physician payments to Medicare levels in the hope of inducing more doctors to participate. This might have worked ten or fifteen years ago when Medicare payments were decent. Now, through price controls and cuts, they too, barely cover the cost of treatment. Also, the boost is temporary; payments revert to current levels after two years. Why would doctors take on Medicaid patients under this scenario? Many will not participate.
Medicaid is a fiscal and humanitarian disaster, providing fragmented, lousy, and expensive care. It is a welfare system and enslaves participants in permanent poverty. Rather than expanding, it should be cut. The federal government should rescind all rules regarding Medicaid and return to the states their share of funds as block grants. States should be free to develop their own approaches to health care for the needy. One such approach, proposed by my colleague, Dr. Alieta Eck in New Jersey, offers free medical malpractice insurance to physicians who donate four hours per week to charity care. Let fifty solutions blossom in the fifty sovereign states!
In today’s physician’s world one has to keep one foot in the medical journals and another in the world of technology. Information technology not only serves us in storing and distributing patient information, it also serves us in analytics. I would tell any fledgling college student or medical student to develop a strong knowledge base in computer science, statistics, and bio-informatics. It is essential to be able to read journals and critically appraise medical articles. It is also important in analyzing one’s own clinical records for outcomes, treatment paradigms, and examining Evidence Based Medicine (EBM).