Keith Smith MD

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MedCity Influencers

If you don’t like Obamacare, can you opt out?

At a physician’s roundtable years ago, I asked Senator Orrin Hatch why I couldn’t punch out of Social Security, happy to leave all that I had paid “into the system” on the table. Why couldn’t anyone, I asked, willing to leave behind all they had paid in, be allowed to walk away from these entitlements, […]

Hospitals

Playing the Hunger Games – HMO style

One of my partners, an ear nose and throat surgeon, resigned years ago from a particularly abusive HMO. He said, “never again,” as did all of the reputable ENT surgeons in the area, physicians whose practices were already busy without having to deal with this outfit. Even though many of the HMOs are long dead […]

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Hospitals

Medical-industrial complex wants Medicaid expansion to delay price transparency

The strongest advocate for expanding Medicaid—and the likely source of funding for the massive advertising campaign—is the hospital lobby. We hear that hospitals are going broke. They can’t make ends meet. The uninsured are breaking the hospitals’ backs from emergency room over-utilization. Hospitals won’t survive unless Medicaid is expanded. (This is the most interesting claim, […]