What would happen if this sort of requirement to accept a government decided pay scale were to include other professions requiring licensure?
If you are a hairdresser who is applying for a state license, should the government regulate your pay?
What if you are an attorney?
A veterinarian?
Who thinks this proposed law is a good idea, and why?
I am not a Massachusetts resident.
However, I am a licensed health care provider.
I would be against this law if I lived in Mass.
I think it will devastate primary care even further.
This law seems like fertile grounds for tons of unpleasant, unforeseen consequences.
This is a stupid proposal. I can’t see how any respected economist (even liberal ones) would endorse this.
At minimum… if they were to pass it, the law should delay the effective date of enforcement by at least 11 years so that today’s high school graduates and their parents can properly weigh the ROI of spending $100,000+ on medical school. It would also allow citizens to plan on practicing in another state that does not artificially restrict their income.
I’m against it. It’ll discourage docs from seeking licensure in Massachusetts, especially young ones with huge debts to pay off, which they’ll never ever do on Medicare reimbursement. It forces professionals to participate in a poorly run, poorly regulated, poorly reimbursed program lest they be stripped of their professional credentials, it turns said professionals into public employees, obliging them to give care for the Medicare system while not even paying them enough to cover their costs of delivering the care in most cases.
Once it shifts completely over to a state-run system, malpractice will be criminal offense. During the transition we’ll need malpractice suits more than ever because a lot of good doctors will be leaving the state.
I think it’s kind of amusing that for years physicians have suckled on the teat of licensure, benefiting from the lack of competition, but now all of a sudden the power of the state to grant and withold licenses doesn’t seem so sweet. I guess it all depends upon whose ox is being gored.
Well I always gathered the point of licensing was to ensure your doctor wasn’t dangerously incompetent. I don’t really want competition from idiots who don’t know the difference between a pancreas and a kidney because the times I most need a doctor are also the times I really don’t have time to shop around.
That said this bill is a piece of garbage. If you want to make doctors public employees then fine, but do it in the right way. Pay for their education, supplies, equipment, insurance, and staff cost. Also make sure they have enough left over to attract the most medically smart people.
Crippling their ability to make money then leaving them with huge costs isn’t fair to the doctors, and dangerous for the rest of us.
What lack of competition? Doctors are competing against other properly licensed doctors. The intent of the licensing requirement is obviously to protect the public from people claiming medical skill/knowledge they do not have.
If I was a doctor and my state passed something like this, I’d be moving my practice to another state. When people have to start waiting three years to see a doctor, because damn few will tolerate this nonsense, maybe the government will figure out this was a bad idea.
WTH are you talking about?
States have always had the “power” (I’d say responsibility) to grant licenses to the competent and suspend a license when a lack of competency compromises public safety.
This is really not a good idea, and it’s Massachusett’s desperate flailing to solve their own HC crisis. In fact, Mass’s UHC system is sort of a testbed for the national one Congress is trying to put into place. If so, we are in deep trouble, because their system is going badly out of control, and their efforts to “fix” it basically boiling down to trying to force people to do unproductive things. Amazingly, this isn’t working.
Restrictions on the number of people entering the medical profession raises the return on investment of becoming a doctor, especially for people who are already licensed, to the extent that the constraint is designed to limit entrants, not ensure competence. Bill Door is saying that doctors were happy to accept the economic rent enjoyed from the artificial restriction on the supply of doctors and are now complaining about political constraints on licensure when they don’t benefit them. Medical licensure is a pretty classic example of rent-seeking behavior.
Bad idea. Underpay doctors, and they’ll leave the state or reduce their working hours, worsening the healthcare shortage. Only when the government is so heavily involved in the healthcare market would it think that the way to fix a physician shortage is to lower their pay.
Of course, if you think this is a stupid idea, you should think the same about UHC. Both will end up in the same place, with politicians trying to hold down physician wages and a healthcare shortage in response. Once this fails, the politicians’ next step would be to outlaw private medicine - forcing everyone to fall under the UHC umbrella - in a desperate attempt to hold up a fatally flawed system. As a med student, that will be the day when I leave for China.
Um, what makes you think China doesn’t have some variation on UHC, like the rest of the civilized world?
I believe this has been covered before; if you are trying to flee the terror of UHC, there pretty much isn’t any place besides America and presumably failed states like Somalia.
Ah yes, let’s talk about “the rest of the civilized world.” How are they doing now? The EU is in shambles due to large social programs. Canada is discussing what they are going to do to get their health care spending under control. The UK is having similar problems. Doesn’t look like UHC is working out all that well for them.