There's nothing wrong with ARNP's

Allahpundit takes issue with having more ARNP's fill the roles of family care doctors.  That's not the problem.  Most if not all ARNP's have multiple years of experience behind them as regular nurses, and then they add advanced degrees on top of that.  When it comes to your yearly checkup or "Hey, what's this rash?" visits, an ARNP is fully qualified to check you out.

Here's the problem that Allahpundit just barely begins to touch on:

That might not be a bad thing if nurses are up to the task, but if they’re getting paid the same Medicare rates that doctors used to get paid and doctors are increasingly getting higher rates due to there being more specialists, well, you do the budgetary math.

ARNP's get the same rate of reimbursement as doctors do.  So while they charge less, they get paid less.  I can tell you right now that Medicare and Tricare are losing propositions for any ARNP.  Not only do they get paid less than from private insurance companies, but they have to do more work in order to get paid.  When I worked at the Hospital, we had to hire a separate staff just to deal with the government forms and bureaucracy that goes along with Medicare.  Between the two people, it was over $100,000 in salary just to deal with the government.  You want to know where the high cost of health care comes from?  THAT is a huge part of it.  As with damn near everything else, the government is the problem, not the solution.  As Allahpundit points out, doctors have been refusing new Medicare patients due to Medicare rates.  This ain't anything new, folks.  Most doctors can only carry so many Medicare patients on their rolls without going out of business.  This is old news.  What most people don't know is that ARNP's or Physician Assistants who have their own medical clinics are also turning away new Medicare patients for exactly the same reason - they can't deal with Medicare patients and keep the doors open.

In short, the government can't even run the socialized medicine program it had in place.  And now they're going to take over the entire health care system in America and run it the same way.  That slamming sound you hear is your doctor's office door, closing and getting locked permanently.  Enjoy!  Might I suggest picking up a book of medicinal herbs and studying it rather well?  Because that's what we're going back to.