« (Video) Chris Wallace: 'The Joke Is On Jon Stewart' | Main | Is Barack Obama Campaign Using the White House For Political Purposes? (Updated) »
June 27, 2011
Obama's Medical Secret Police Has 'Mystery Shoppers' Calling Doctors
Topics: Political News and commentariesNow that Obamacare will be vastly expanding the number of people seeking treatment while paying with government programs that pay substantially less than doctor's fees and what private insurance pays, the Obama administration is conducting a stealth survey (using "mystery shoppers"), calling up doctors and lying to them, in an effort to catch doctors turning down Medicare and Medicaid patients .
According to the New York Times:
Alarmed by a shortage of primary care doctors, Obama administration officials are recruiting a team of "mystery shoppers" to pose as patients, call doctors' offices and request appointments to see how difficult it is for people to get care when they need it.As Thomas Lifson points out, it's easy to see where this is leading. Having expanded demand without addressing the supply of doctors, and paying less for that expanded demand than market prices, the Obama administration needs a fall guy, and doctors fit the bill.The administration says the survey will address a "critical public policy problem": the increasing shortage of primary care doctors, including specialists in internal medicine and family practice. It will also try to discover whether doctors are accepting patients with private insurance while turning away those in government health programs that pay lower reimbursement rates.
Federal officials predict that more than 30 million Americans will gain coverage under the health care law passed last year. "These newly insured Americans will need to seek out new primary care physicians, further exacerbating the already growing problem" of a shortage of such physicians in the United States, the Department of Health and Human Services said in a description of the project prepared for the White House.
Plans for the survey have riled many doctors because the secret shoppers will not identify themselves as working for the government.
"I don't like the idea of the government snooping," said Dr. Raymond Scalettar, an internist in Washington. "It's a pernicious practice -- Big Brother tactics, which should be opposed."
According to government documents obtained from Obama administration officials, the mystery shoppers will call medical practices and ask if doctors are accepting new patients and, if so, how long the wait would be. The government is eager to know whether doctors give different answers to callers depending on whether they have public insurance, like Medicaid, or private insurance, like Blue Cross and Blue Shield.
Some of the liars calling doctors will say they have the symptoms associated with pneumonia, something requiring a medical visit. All the better to scapegoat doctors who decline to see a Medicare or Medicaid patient. Others will follow scripts with more benign symptoms.Secret police, mystery shoppers, lying to private businesses ... not much to see here folks, it's just part of the "change" America got when it elected Barack Obama.To make sure they are not detected, secret shoppers will hide their telephone numbers by blocking caller ID information.
Eleven percent of the doctors will be called a third time. The callers will identify themselves as calling "on behalf of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services." They will ask whether the doctors accept private insurance, Medicaid or Medicare, and whether they take "self-pay patients." The study will note any discrepancies between those answers and the ones given to mystery shoppers.
And this is somehow suppose to help solve the doctor shortage problem? Isn't the doctor shortage something that was well known long before the Democrats passed their bill to add millions of people to Medicaid? Who, in the first place - other than agenda-driven, liberal-progressive Democrats, would believe even in the drunken stupor of voting for Obamacare, that over 30 million people could be added to the healthcare dole without creating an enormous shortage and tremendous waiting periods for "care"?
What's next, are they now going to put doctors in prison because they won't accept patients that cost them more to treat than they can afford charge?
Can anyone seriously deny that the objective here is to ultimately eliminate medical "private practice" and have all physicians work directly for the government?
Posted by Hyscience at June 27, 2011 3:09 PM
Articles Related to Political News and commentaries:
