Under Obamacare the doctor-patient relationship "will be irreparably severed"

Much has been written about this bill’s “takeover” of American health care. But, the sad truth of the matter is that, for the past few decades, the federal and state governments have been in control of close to half of all health care resources, with Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, and other government health programs accounting for some 48 percent of all health care dollars spent in 2007. In addition, private health insurance is already heavily regulated by state and federal laws governing who must be covered and how. In a very meaningful sense, government took over health care long ago.

Still, despite copious amounts of government control, what kept American health care alive was the residue of market processes that enabled some semblance of choice, price signals, adaptability, and—perhaps most important—physician responsiveness to patients’ needs. The great tragedy of today’s health care legislation is not simply that it seeks to exert more control over the provision of health insurance and medical services per se, but that by doing so, it takes us farther and farther into a future in which the relationship between physician and patient will be irreparably severed.

Most of the problems in America’s health care system—high and rising prices, lack of consistent and reliable access for millions, rampant cost shifting, and an inability to distinguish between effective and ineffective services or between high and low quality, to name just a few—stem not from some supposed market failure, but primarily from existing government interventions in the market for health care and health insurance