What About the Doctors?

This was my father -- the finest physician I (and many others) have ever known, and a man who gave his life to the practice of medicine . . . really, to the art and science of trying to heal people.

Reading Daniel Henninger's fine piece on ObamaCare's effect on doctors, I recall how many times my father denounced the interference of insurance companies and the government; how he hated the paperwork that made it more difficult for him to find the time to care for his patients as individuals; and his prediction that government would someday try to encroach on doctors' prerogatives to care for their patients as they deemed best.

We are seeing it all come true. As Henninger points out, we hear plenty about costs. We hear plenty about "coverage" and "volume" and all kinds of technical terms. What we don't hear about is patients, healing, and the doctors who are want to practice medicine as a calling -- rather than as an administrative job or a simple meal ticket. ObamaCare is destroying the "care" Americans have long had . . . and destroying the medical professional along the way.

Let's hope more people notice before it's too late. No doubt there are other doctors out there who want to make a difference the way my dad did -- unless their aspirations are trampled by a new medical "system" in which bureaucrats, rather than doctors, dictate the terms of patient "care."