I'm a surgeon. My overhead costs to run my practice are around $25,000/month. Many surgeons in my field don't take Medicare because it doesn't pay enough to make it profitable. The democrates want to cut Medicare by 500Billion. They want to cut payment to doctors and hospitals. You are going to see a lot more doctors refusing to accept Medicare with cuts like that. I can't pay money for the privalege of going to work, and I work way to hard to not get paid well. I frequently get paged in the middle of the night by patients, nurses, you name it. I'm on call a lot to cover trauma and frequently have to go in at night (still have to work the next day), miss dinners, parties, holidays, weekends, etc. Half the time I'm so tired I feel sick. I'm missing the best years of my life and loosing out on watching my kids grow up so I can help others.
When Medicare was started in 1965, they predicted how much it would cost by 1990. They were off by a factor of TEN!!! You think the current plan is only going to cost 1 Trillion!?! It will end up costing much more, and our children will be paralyzed by the debt this administration is racking up. They want to cut payments to hospitals, but they are struggling already. Hospitals already loose money on every knee replacement patient. Soon they will refuse to let those surgeries happen in their hospitals. Obama says he won't tell you what doctor you are allowed to see. He is just cutting reimbursement so much the doctors will refuse to see you. I'm a softy, so I actually operate on a lot of people with no insurance for free (meaning I'm actually paying out of my own pocket to cover their associated overhead costs). The government doesn't allow doctors to take a tax deduction on the charity work we do (that would get alot more doctors willing to give free care). As for other countries - Canada and Europe are a distaster. I attend large international meetings ever year. Doctors from Canada say that there is now a one knee replacement per knee per lifetime in Canada. Knee replacements wear out, can get infected, etc. Not to mention that patients often have to wait a year in Canada to get their total knee. There is a reason wealth Canadians come to the US in droves for health care. As soon as I get my Droid, I'm getting the Obama app. The next election can't come soon enough.