Comments

1. 

   Tim Swanson

   September 2, 2003

   Speaking of ze socialists, here is a new endeavour that will be at your door soon enough:

   http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/world/6666103.htm

   Gotta pay for all those broken windows in Iraq…

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2. 

   Skip Oliva

   September 2, 2003

   Another front in the socialized medicine war is the Federal Trade Commission’s campaign to prevent physicians from voluntarily negotiating contracts with HMOs. Under current FTC policy, physicians must either accept an HMOs offer (which is usually below market value) or adopt a bureaucrat-approved scheme designed to ensure the physicians lose money while insulating the HMO from financial risk. Physicians that try to act outside these policies on their own accord face antitrust prosecution for illegal “restraint of trade.”

   Here’s a practical example: The HMOs in a market decide to reimburse physicians $5 per patient to provide a procedure, but the procedure costs the physician $8 per patient. The physicians get together as a group and tell the HMO they won’t sign a new contract unless they’re reimbursed at least $10 per patient for the procedure. Under the FTC’s policy, that’s “unfair competition” and thus illegal. But if the HMO decided to unilaterally cut the reimbursement further, say to $4 per patient, that’s a pro-competitive act, even though it leads doctors to stop performing the procedure altogether rather than losing more money.

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