Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) Responds to Elizabeth Warren's Challenge

TUCSON, Ariz., Nov. 4, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- In her $52 trillion Medicare for All proposal, Elizabeth Warren would repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, Medicare, Medicaid, and all state laws and regulations on private insurance, observes the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS). Instead, everyone would purportedly receive all necessary care, courtesy of the federal government, without worrying about the cost.

Warren challenges those who oppose it to "put forward their own plan to cover everyone, without costing the country anything more in health care spending, and while putting $11 trillion back in the pockets of the American people by eliminating premiums and virtually eliminating out-of-pocket costs." Those who can't do that are supposed to "concede that they think it's more important to protect the eye-popping profits of private insurers and drug companies and the immense fortunes of the top 1% and giant corporations."

AAPS responds that those who oppose a plan to force everyone to rely on an impossible perpetual-motion machine are not obligated to devise a different model. Preventing the destruction of our existing machinery is a far better idea. We need, above all, to protect our patients' ability to receive care.

AAPS makes the following observations:

    --  No one might "ever, ever die or go bankrupt because of health care
        costs," as Warren promises. But people will die or go bankrupt because
        of untreated illness, if care is simply unobtainable.
    --  The only way Warren can ensure that everyone can "get the care they
        need, when they need it" is to let her experts define the term "need" to
        correspond to what is available and allowed.
    --  Perhaps no one will need to worry about whether a physician is "in
        network," but patients might worry instead about whether there are
        physicians in practice. While patients may no longer have to worry about
        insurers' denials of treatment, they will have to deal with government
        denials.
    --  Warren's $11 trillion "tax cut" is the amount Americans now contribute
        to employer-sponsored insurance, co-pays, deductibles, and out-of-pocket
        spending. Whatever care they get under the Warren plan will be paid for
        from the giant collective pool controlled by "experts" and bureaucrats.
        Americans won't be allowed to spend their savings on prompter or better
        care.
    --  The administrative cost spiral began with Medicare and Medicaid in an
        effort to stem relentless increases in spending. The purported low
        administrative cost in Medicare is a myth and certainly does not include
        the huge billing and compliance costs imposed on doctors and hospitals.
    --  Cutting and bundling payments to "providers" may dramatically reduce
        spending--by forcing doctors' practices and hospitals to close, so fewer
        services can be given.
    --  Warren's "negotiations" involve de facto price controls, a government
        takeover of drug manufacturing, the destruction of intellectual property
        rights--and the end of incentives to innovate.
    --  Much of the proposal is about increasing taxes. The middle class will
        pay the taxes imposed on the giant corporations and the financial sector
        through increased costs and fees.
    --  Warren will greatly expand the funding and power of the IRS in order to
        extract more revenue. "Asking people to pay a little more" doesn't seem
        to work.
    --  Importing and legalizing more immigrants is assumed to raise $400
        billion in tax revenue. This assumes that the revenue would exceed the
        increased social costs, and that people fleeing poverty will be eager to
        contribute to the health care of more "privileged" Americans.
    --  Tying different providers--the diligent and skilled, and the
        nonproductive and less competent--to the same payment, as Warren
        suggests, is the socialist incentive system that leads to industrial
        collapse and starvation whenever and wherever tried.

AAPS maintains that the only way to decrease costs while improving quality and access is through free-market competition, honest price signals, and restoring control over their own money to the Americans who earned it.

The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) is a national organization representing physicians in all specialties since 1943.

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SOURCE Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS)