A bit more on California's health care reform bill

If you read the preceding post, you might be asking, "Why would any physician support this bill?" Historically, of course, physicians have been strongly opposed to the idea of socialized medicine, for obvious reasons. But this bill is strongly supported by the California Physicians' Alliance.

How can this be?

If you visit the CaPA website, all becomes clear. They emphasize that they are not supporting socialized medicine, they're supporting socialized insurance, the distinction being:

Socialized medicine: Physicians work directly for the government

Socialized insurance: Physicians work for themselves, and are simply paid by the government

Now it's clear why they're supporting this plan. They believe that their salaries won't be greatly affected, and that all their billing headaches will be handled by the government. That way they can just practice medicine and still make serious bank.

But wait until funding problems arise and the government starts pressing physicians to cut costs. That's guaranteed to happen, the only question is how long it will take. My guess is that in five years or so, the founders of CaPA won't be invited to very many of their peers' parties.