My good friend Mark Kot is the real Hamptons Doctor. He doesn't make house calls because his Southampton Urgent Medical Care facility is where everyone goes for the best medical care in the Hamptons.
I asked him for his take on Obamacare. Yesterday he sent me the little ditty below, and I need to share it with you today.
He got it off the Internet. Which means it's true. No, I'm not kidding. Well, at least this time I'm not kidding. This Internet ditty is true.
Before I share it with you, let me tell you why it is so true and so frightening...
Dr. Kot used to be an emergency room doctor at the local hospital, but he saw too many things there that weren't in patients' best interest. He saw long waits for people who needed immediate attention. He saw people getting billed huge amounts just because they had good insurance that would pay the tabs. He saw inefficiencies in the layers of bureaucracy that envelop hospitals. He saw a lot of things that needed changing, but he couldn't change what he wasn't able to control.
So in 2003, he went into private practice. He's the only doctor in his stylish and beautifully appointed facility. His welcoming room - you just can't call it a "waiting room" - is like a Hamptons house living room. He employs (as in created jobs, very good-paying jobs) 18 people at the year-round office.
No one waits more than a handful of minutes to get in. Everyone gets the best care for what they need and no "add-ons" or bill-padding, ever. Not that hospitals would ever do that (except for the ones that have been caught doing that).
They take some insurance, they have to. But most folks pay "out-of-pocket," whether it's the TV anchor paying by check, an area waitress paying with cash, or a poor-wee-bugger scraping along in life that Mark doesn't charge.
What that does, Mark tells me, is make his office more efficient. He doesn't have to wait long periods for reimbursements. He can manage his extensive payroll and other expenses more efficiently, which means he charges his patients less and he can pay his people more and run a better medical care facility.
That's why his reputation and the facility's reputation are renowned in the Hamptons.
Only there's a problem.
Obamacare may put him out of business.
Why? He's lectured me on what Obamacare will eventually create, and frankly I don't understand all the nuances he's explained, but he's board certified and been a practicing doctor for 26 years. He knows his business.
So, rather than explain it all to me again, he sent me this little ditty...
Obamacare is going to screw up the already screwed-up American medical care industry because:
We're being "gifted" with a health care plan we are forced to purchase and fined if we don't, which purportedly covers at least ten million more people, without adding a single new doctor, but provides for 16,000 new IRS agents, who have recently demonstrated their objective and professional integrity, written by a committee whose chairman says he doesn't understand it, passed by a Congress that didn't read it but exempted themselves from it, and signed by a President who smokes, with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn't pay his taxes, for which we'll be taxed for four years before any benefits take effect, by a government which has already bankrupted Social Security and Medicare, Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, and the Post Office all to be overseen by a surgeon general who is obese, and financed by a country that's broke!!!!!
What the hell could possibly go wrong?
It's not that the local hospital isn't a good facility; it's just that no one goes there anymore, it's too crowded. And the insurance companies want it that way. Eventually they will raise premiums to pay for all the care that people are going to get, because everyone has to pay for the whole scheme.
And as far as creating good full-time jobs goes, you can count that out. Part-time help will be cheaper for employers who can't afford the added costs they'll have to pay. I've already heard anecdotes of workers who are getting their hours slashed in anticipation of the new laws taking effect.
There's a lot wrong with Obamacare. There's a lot wrong with the way it was shoved down our throats.
We're being told it might taste bad going down, but it's going to help us.
That's not true. It's just bad medicine.
Get ready for Jan. 1, 2014.
When Shah's not looking into the frightening facts about Obamacare, he's analyzing what the latest economic news means for investors - like this look at what Detroit's bankruptcy means for muni bonds...
Credit: Money Morning - Only the News You Can Profit From http://feeds.moneymorning.com/~r/moneymorning/jOLe/~3/Qq4UcwMS2Fo/
