Obamacare

"No matter what your opinion is on Obamacare. No matter your political leanings. No matter what philosophical agreement or disagreement you have with Obamacare. All people, especially physicians, need to understand the consequences of today's ruling. All autonomy, all power, all control of healthcare in the United States has just been relinquished to "for-profit" insurance companies and government bureaucracies. Granted, it's not all doom and gloom just yet. The actual practice of medicine and the day-to-day lives of patients and physicians is likely to go unchanged in the short-term. However, this isn't the issue. This is about control. All autonomy, all power, all control, and all decisions that are part of the patient-physician relationship will now only continue to exist as derived and allowed by health insurance companies and Medicare. In other words, all physician-patient decisions will now only exist as allowed by the businessmen, lawyers, and politicians.

Again, maybe you think this is the right direction for the country, maybe you think this is the wrong direction for the country, but we have to agree on the facts. The facts are that physicians have been squeezed out of their role as contributors to healthcare decision-making in this country. All power has been relinquished to the insurance companies and government bureaucracies."