The Question No One Will Answer on Nationalized Healthcare

There is one question that no one seems to want to answer -- and no member of the press dare ask -- about what happens if The One is actually able to force through a massive new socialized health insurance program through Congress over the next four years:  If we suddenly have 40 million new patients seeking healthcare, who will take care of them?

You see, right now, we lack the facilities, the doctors, the nurses, the technicians, and the specialists to serve that many new patients.  We are losing general practitioners by the thousands -- many of them opting for "boutique medicine" and eschewing insurance and Medicaid.  While the nursing shortage is easing, we are not out of the woods yet in many parts of the country, and certainly not in urban areas, where the vast majority of these new patients would seek service.  And a lot of those 40 million new patients will need OB-GYN care, a speciality that is shrinking at an alarming rate, as physicians abandon the field because of outrageously high malpractice insurance premiums.

And that does not get us to facilities.  Where will these patients be treated?  Smaller facilities are struggling mightily.  Look at Nanticoke Memorial in Seaford, DE, which has a debt level several times higher than any of its surrounding competitors.  Like Good Samaritan in Baltimore, they jumped onto the bandwagon of questionable financing schemes like auction rate securities, and their debt service obligations are far outpacing their operational revenues.  Since the majority of these 40 million new patients will be paying through some form of government insurance, these hospitals and physicians will receive whatever reimbursement is dictated by the government -- not a reimbursement that necessarily reflects the cost of delivering the care.

So again the question:  If we suddenly have 40 million new patients seeking healthcare, who will take care of them?  Someone should ask the President elect how he intends to solve the larger issue of delivery of care before he creates a new crisis trying to solve an older manufactured one.