Tag Archives: Scott Gottlieb

A Balanced Approach To The Coronavirus

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On Friday, Townhall posted an article by Guy Benson about the coronavirus.

The article includes a number of tweets by Scott Gottlieb, MD, that provide some perspective on the coronavirus.

This is the content of the tweets:

1. Your risk of contracting in the U.S. is still low. While it may be spreading, there are likely still a small number of cases. This could change, but it is likely the case right now.

2. We have capacity to contain small outbreaks, and, where we can’t, mitigate impact of spread. We have best public health system in the world, best infection control procedures, a vast healthcare system with substantial capacity, well equipped hospitals, and skilled providers.

3. The development of vaccines and therapeutics is actively underway and, in time, we could have a treatment or preventative medicine that could substantially lessen the impact of this virus.

4. This could be a long fight that will require shared sacrifice. There may not be a start and finish to the spread of this virus. It may become something that we need to manage for a period of time until we can develop a therapeutic backstop.

5. The best thing Americans can do is be vigilant, take responsible precautions, and follow the advice of our great public health professionals at CDC and local health authorities.

The doctor concludes:

We have faced many infectious threats in our history. This one is sinister, but we have never been better equipped to mitigate its impact. We will preserve life, and prevail.

We don’t know what the future holds in terms of this illness. We do know that steps are being taken to prevent an epidemic. We know that we have extremely good health care in America. It is time to take seriously the advice to wash our hands and cover our mouths when we cough or sneeze. In the end, God is in control, and He will see us through this.

The Impact Of Obamacare On Your Doctor

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On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal posted an article by Scott Gottlieb discussing the impact of Obamacare on doctors. The article points out that the regulations in Obamacare will move doctors toward being 40-hour week employees rather than being in charge of their own offices.

The article reports:

…Because when doctors practice in small offices, it is hard for Washington to regulate what they do. There are too many of them, and the government is too remote. It is far easier for federal agencies to regulate physicians if they work for big hospitals. So ObamaCare shifts money to favor the delivery of outpatient care through hospital-owned networks.

The irony is that in the name of lowering costs, ObamaCare will almost certainly make the practice of medicine more expensive. It turns out that when doctors become salaried hospital employees, their overall productivity falls.

This is another result of government by special interest groups. In this particular case, the special interest group is the unions.

The article explains:

All of this reduced productivity translates into the loss of what should be a critical factor in the effort to offer more health care while containing costs. Yet hospitals aren’t buying doctors’ practices because they want to reform the delivery of medical care. They are making these purchases to gain local market share and develop monopolies. They are also exploiting an arbitrage opportunity presented by Medicare‘s billing schemes, which pay more for many services when they are delivered at a hospital instead of an outpatient doctor’s office.

This billing structure exists because hospitals are politically favored in Washington. Their mostly unionized workforces give them political power, as does their status as big employers in congressional districts.

This is another example of a law regulating health care that was written without concern for the impact it would have on medical care for individuals in this country. The law was written with special interest groups and government control in mind. It needs to be repealed and rewritten with the needs of American citizens in mind.

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