Isn’t it great that the Affordable (actually Unaffordable) Care Act is expected to place millions more on the Medicaid dole for receiving their health care? Apparently at the cost to no one, even 30,000 more patients will be covered in Yakima County alone where I work and care for the sick.

A question haunts me however. Where are the physicians that are going to provide the care? I work in the private sector and we haven’t accepted any new Medicaid patients for years. When the Federal and State governments reimburse us $34.50 for an office visit of $175.00, we can’t afford to.

Those same government entities aren’t there to help my partners and me pay our staff, pay the electricity bill, or pay for the lease on our building.

What’s the answer? These new patients must go to the government funded clinics. These clinics are paid differently than those of us in the private sector. Our poor uncle is their rich uncle, as I heard a physician once put it. These clinics include the Farm Workers Clinics, Neighborhood Health, Indian Health, Community Health of Central Washington, and others.

Those clinics are paid for every dollar they bill. How fair is that? No wonder “free enterprise” doesn’t work. And where does that lead the practice of medicine?

The future is grim for this once proud and honored profession. Soon, everyone (and that means YOU) will receive their health care at the Farm Workers Clinic just like the government wants. That way they control the medicines you’re allowed, they control what surgeries you will get, they control what physicians will provide your care, and they determine what people will get that care.

You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.