A COMMENT THAT BECAME A POST

HEALTH CONTROL hasn't 100% been passed yet and as Big Government goes in for the kill on the healthcare industry here's how things have been working out for the part of it that has already been nationalized: The Mayo Clinic, praised by President Barack Obama as a national model for efficient health care, will stop accepting Medicare patients as of [January 1] at one of its primary-care clinics in Arizona, saying the U.S. government pays too little. …Obama in June cited the nonprofit Rochester, Minnesota-based Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio for offering "the highest quality care at costs well below the national norm." Mayo's move to drop Medicare patients may be copied by family doctors, some of whom have stopped accepting new patients from the program, said Lori Heim, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, in a telephone interview…"Many physicians have said, 'I simply cannot afford to keep taking care of Medicare patients,'" said Heim, a family doctor who practices in Laurinburg, North Carolina. "If you truly know your business costs and you are losing money, it doesn't make sense to do more of it." The Mayo organization had 3,700 staff physicians and scientists and treated 526,000 patients in 2008. It lost $840 million last year on Medicare, the government's health program for the disabled and those 65 and older, Mayo spokeswoman Lynn Closway said. GM and Chrysler don't have to make profits anymore, why should hospitals? The idea is to provide cushy positions for Comrade Obama's union friends, not to operate efficiently. Nationwide, doctors made about 20 percent less for treating Medicare patients than they did caring for privately insured patients in 2007, a payment gap that has remained stable during the last decade, according to a March report by the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, a panel that advises Congress on Medicare issues. Congress last week postponed for two months a 21.5 percent cut in Medicare reimbursements for doctors. But of course when all healthcare is under federal micromanagement, doctors will have no choice to accept whatever pay the petty tyrants in Washington deign to offer them. However, liberals still haven't solved the problem of people having a choice on whether they become doctors in the first place. This Post came in as a comment from Anonymous.