Like some bad dreams, this thing never fails to deliver

We’re not quite at the level of bureaucratization and nationalization that Europe and Canada are with respect to health care but we are already experiencing the same phenomena: a shortage of primary care physicians.

Obama administration officials, alarmed at doctor shortages, are looking for ways to increase the supply of physicians to meet the needs of an aging population and millions of uninsured people who would gain coverage under legislation championed by the president.

The officials said they were particularly concerned about shortages of primary care providers who are the main source of health care for most Americans.

(Quick aside: That last paragraph is symptomatic of the pratfall of nationalized health care… the belief that once everyone is insured, everything will be just peachy, health-wise, for everybody. Primary care providers are not the main source of health care for Americans… Americans are the main source of health care for Americans. If you are counting on your GP to keep you healthy then you are probably not leading a healthy life-style).

One proposal being discussed is to increase Medicare payments to GPs at the expense of high-paid specialists, which of course, does not please the specialists and has touched off a lobbying fracas.

Another is to simply increase the number of GPs – no small feat considering the cost of medical school. And still another is to vet greater participation of nurse practitioners and physician assistants. It’d be like going to see the doctor, except you wouldn’t see an actual doctor. That’s comforting.

So any way you shake it, increasing the number of GPs will cost more money. Now, that sounds entirely reasonable except that…. it’s all supposed to be free!

And dig this for a microcosm of socialized medicine:

The experience of Massachusetts is instructive. Under a far-reaching 2006 law, the state succeeded in reducing the number of uninsured. But many who gained coverage have been struggling to find primary care doctors, and the average waiting time for routine office visits has increased.

The ratio of primary care doctors to population is higher in Massachusetts than in other states.

That is not a misprint. Only in the Bizarro World that is socialized medicine can one have more doctors with less service.

Unfortunately, the linked article from the NYT never gets around to discussing the root cause of this phenomena which is the disconnect between price and cost.

The price of health care which is pre-negotiated by (non-vested) third parties in a socialized system will not reflect the cost of that health care that is provided. That is why you have the illusory effect of seemingly more doctors but crappier service. The doctors simply will not offer specific services if those services aren’t being properly compensated.

Time after time after time… it’s an ironclad stone-cold lock: the corresponding degrees by which you nationalize health care will result in actual higher costs and poorer service by the same corresponding degrees.

Like the dude pictured above, the disastrous consequences of socialized medicine are inescapable.