Justice Dept. forces price controls on Docs.
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drgrcevich, MD, Psychiatry/Mental Health June 2, 2010Get a load of this case from Idaho:http://www.csmonitor.com/Money/Mises-Economics-Blog/2010/0531/Justice-Department-declares-war-on-doctors This case is a watershed for two reasons:First, until now the Federal Trade Commission, not the Justice Department, has taken the lead in prosecuting physicians. Since 2000, the FTC has brought about three dozen cases against physicians (all but one of which settled without any trial). But the FTC only has civil and administrative jurisdiction; the Antitrust Division has civil and criminal jurisdiction. The Sherman Act makes no distinction between civil and criminal “price fixing,” so in a case like this, it’s entirely a matter of prosecutorial discretion whether to charge the doctors with a civil or criminal offense. Based on the descriptions in the Antitrust Division’s press release, there’s certainly no reason they couldn’t have prosecuted the doctors criminally and insisted upon prison sentences — and there’s little doubt such threats were made or implied to obtain the physicians’ agreement to the proposed “settlement.”The second reason this is a landmark case is that the Justice Department has unambiguously stated that refusal to accept government price controls is a form of illegal “price fixing.” The FTC has hinted at this when it’s said physicians must accept Medicare-based reimbursement schedules from insurance companies. But the DOJ has gone the final step and said, “Government prices are market prices,” in the form of the Idaho Industrial Commission’s fee schedule. The IIC administers the state’s worker compensation system and is composed of three commissioners appointed by the governor. This isn’t a quasi-private or semi-private entity. It’s a purely government operation.What’s more, the Antitrust Division has linked a refusal to accept government price controls with a refusal to accept a “private” insurance company’s contract offer. This lives little doubt that antitrust regulators consider insurance party contracts the equivalent of government price controls — and physicians and patients have no choice but to accept them |
| #1 of 7, Added By: JR.CARBON, DO, Other Clinical, 2:59PM Jun 02, 2010 |
It looked like, sounded like, smelt like, felt like, tasted like and propriocepted like…… communism years ago!Yeah fools…… free “universal health care” for all!
Ya gotta love it!
| #3 of 7, Added By: An_14703997, MD, Psychiatry/Mental Health, 7:32AM Jun 03, 2010 |
Thank you for bringing this to our attention.This is truly chilling. Good luck to patients and physicians alike. When the government uses such strongarm tactics, it will severely damage patient care. Perhaps the government is prepared to jail thousands of physicians, but again that will result in compromised patient care. To all the leftists who supported the health care bill, this is a sign of things to come - and it’s not pretty.