Obama care would lead to the complete destruction of private healthcare itself.

By Dr Walter Campbell
CEO/Founder Arctic Chiropractic

I'm 34, father of four, a lifelong Alaskan, a former Marine, and the owner and founder of 11 Chiropractic clinics across Alaska.

I’ve traveled around this state, have lived, worked, and done business from Barrow to Unalaska, Bethel to Delta, Fairbanks to Soldotna, and most places in between.

I’ve been blessed to work with exceptional physicians, therapists, and staff and treat patients in a variety of wonderful and diverse communities all over our state.
I’ve worked for, and with the federal government, as well as local Alaskan boroughs and city governments.

My unique experiences have given me strong, but, (I believe) informed opinions on my state, my country, my family, and Healthcare in particular. It is regarding the latter I write today.

Recent proposed legislation, in both the House and Senate regarding Healthcare reform, display a frightening potential. One needs merely to read HR3200 to see a vision of healthcare that would completely eradicate the private sector, increase tax burdens, limit choice, decrease quality of care, and create a central government with tremendous power over the individual. A grand over-arching bureaucracy would emerge, the likes of which has never before been seen in American history...and once established, would be nearly impossible to remove, as power given is seldom, if ever rescinded.

Proponents of this legislation will tell you that the government run healthcare option will not eliminate private sector insurance. I would argue the consequence would be, not merely the elimination of the private insurance, but the complete destruction of private healthcare itself. The government funded option would be offered at such a reduced price to the consumer (being subsidized by the federal government), as to completely alter the market. The wave of people leaving private insurers would drive costs up, and reimbursements down. During the ‘mass exodus’, many private physicians would find themselves caught in the middle.

Most doctors acknowledge that those providers who currently accept the government insurance known as Medicare and Medicaid (and less than 1 in 5 do), do so at a loss. In fact, it is only through reimbursements received from work performed on either cash patients or those with private insurance, that providers ‘make up the difference’ to support the financial burden of accepting government healthcare patients. Without those cash and private insurance reimbursements, or should they significantly decrease, these private physicians would find themselves unable to make payroll, pay rents, malpractice insurance, federal and state taxes, etc. They would soon be out of business, and most likely, out of the profession.

This decimation of the private sector insurers and physicians would lead to an increase in cost to the American tax payer. In this classic shell game, the proverbial ‘pea’ (the cost of this care), would be shuffled from under its current shell of free markets, to one of government funds. To the untrained eye, it is as if the ‘pea’ simply disappeared. To those watching keenly, however, there are no funds the government has, except those it forcibly takes from its citizenry. The pea remains, only it’s really under the third shell: the American Taxpayer. Assuming this new government program works even remotely similar to the current federally funded programs we have in place, one thing is certain: it will not be fiscally responsible.

The limited choice that will arise, should, at this point, be readily apparent. Less physicians able to make a living at their trade, means, quite simply, less physicians.
Ever rising costs will most certainly mean (in addition to rising taxes) less services.
Less physicians and less services, equates to less choice.

It should be enough to point out that fewer doctors, being paid less money, to perform fewer procedures ultimately means less quality of care. There will also exist no ability and no incentive, for physicians to excel. Take these away, and you will eliminate excellence itself.

The increasing move toward a single payer, as well as expanding and aging populations will demand that this new department grow ever larger. This new agency will also have unprecedented power, presiding over which treatment, which doctor its citizens are allowed to receive, and when…or if they are allowed to receive care at all.

To deliver such power to a central government, and so diminish and demean the individual, in a country and a state whose greatest achievements were the creation of ideals that strove to protect the individual, their liberties and freedoms at all cost...is Un-American...and Un-Alaskan.

Our current system is by no means perfect. There are areas where improvement can be made. But let us address those, individually, instead of marching blindly towards a system that will only insure the detrimental consequences I have outlined above, without addressing any of our current concerns, except perhaps to make them worse. It is for these reasons, I would strongly urge the Alaskan Standard and its readers not to support any legislation that dramatically alters, what is an admittedly flawed system, but what happens to be the world standard, the fundamentally private American healthcare system.