As of January 1, 2010, the Mayo Clinic in Arizona no longer accepts Medicare patients at one of its primary care clinics. On December 23, Michael Yardley, spokesperson for the clinic, said, “Many physicians cannot afford to take care of Medicare patients.”
To make matters worse, the Senate passed a healthcare bill that includes substantial cuts in Medicare funding and a 21.5 percent cut in Medicare reimbursements to doctors as well as hefty tax increases on the most successful and productive in society.
If success and productivity are punished, why bother making more money and paying more taxes in effect sanctioning and enabling more unrestrained spending and government control? The more resourceful and successful and entrepreneurs are portrayed as recipients of illegitimate “windfalls” or just plain lucky and are compelled to pay more in the name of fairness and economic justice. When profits, wealth and creativity are denigrated and punished in society, they start to disappear, leaving everyone the poorer.
Ed Konecnik
Flushing
