Thursday, May 01, 2014

The Coming Two-Tier Health System: ObamaCare is already creating one class of care for the poor and middle class and another for the affluent.

The Wall Street Journal reports:
Meanwhile, concierge practices are increasing rapidly, as patients who can afford it, along with many top doctors, rush to avoid the problems of an increasingly restrictive health system. The American Academy of Private Physicians estimates that there are now about 4,400 concierge physicians, 30% more than last year. In a recent Merritt Hawkins survey, about 7% to 10% of physicians planned to transition to concierge or cash-only practices in the next one to three years. With doctors already spending 22% of their time on nonclinical paperwork, they will find more government intrusion under ObamaCare regulations taking even more time away from patient care.

As America doubles down on government authority over health care, Europeans with the means to do so are increasingly circumventing their own centralized systems. In Britain, even though they're already paying for the National Health Service, six million Brits—two-thirds of citizens earning more than $78,700—now buy private health insurance. Meanwhile, more than 50,000 travel out of the U.K. annually, spending more than $250 million, to receive treatment more readily than they can at home. Even in Sweden, the mother of all welfare nations, half a million Swedes now use private insurance, up from 100,000 a decade ago.

Unless ObamaCare is drastically altered, America's health care will also become even more divided, with rising inequality.
It's kind of like Barack Obama and Rahm Emanuel telling you public education is real important and then : sending their children to expensive private schools.