Under current restrictions, it is illegal for the doctor to accept a patient's payment for any amount over the government's approved reimbursement for a service covered by Medicare.This is a textbook example of why it's wrong for the government to be the middleman for your dollars. If you were freely exchanging your dollars for medical services, you would be within your right to choose which services, which provider (and thereby, what cost) you prefer. But it's not your dollar anymore, it's a dollar that has passed through the hand of government, somehow "sanctifying" it from the taint of profit or greed before being handed to the provider of services you desire.
The government also prohibits the patient from being reimbursed by Medicare if the patient chooses to privately contract for services with a doctor who does not accept Medicare.
Unfortunately for you, because you are not the one exchanging the dollar for services anymore, you no longer have the power to negotiate the terms of that exchange (unlike your ability to choose which breakfast cereal you purchase - ironically a real factor in your health). Your options for exchange consist of trying to game the tax system to your benefit, and punching a ballot every now and then to decide who will be your personal benevolent tyrant for a season.
Also working against you is the fact that since your money has been pooled together with everyone else's before reaching this point of medical services, it falls upon the representatives of the People to make sure your best interests (as they define it) are served in this exchange. Unsurprisingly, every incident that brings harm to one becomes a reason to legislate for all - since the only way, in this situation, to keep harm from coming to the one again is to codify the incident into preventative law, transferring the effects of that exchange from one to all. How else could a victim be protected if the terms of their exchanges are dictated by government?
The thousands of pages of directives and regulations dictating the use of what has now become "public money" on your behalf is no different than a hypothetical "government-sanctioned grocery list", posted on the doors of every store, specifying the items you may buy, at what price, and from whom. It would also be illegal in this bizarro world for the grocer to accept any of your personal dollars for his business with you would be funded by the state. Only a selfish, greedy rich person would ever need or want more than the benevolent tyrants had provided.
Would you be surprised to see the shelves eventually sparse and then empty for lack of products to sell? (as all the producers of products chose to do business elsewhere where they could set their own prices with the buyers) Would you be surprised to see lines of disgruntled shoppers, each carrying their apportioned groceries through the "free checkout line"?
We can't forget that medical products and services are not intrinsically different from any other product or service. They must to be bought and sold, and replacing personal choice with government fiat doesn't "wash the (supposed) stain of profit" from the product one buys. That doctor must choose to provide a service, just like the hairdresser - or he is a slave. Those drugs must be manufactured by human beings, who, devoid of the right to choose their incentive, will cease to do so and seek other means of providing for themselves. Treating medical care any different than "food care" results in a world where food is cheap (for the poor), plentiful (for the multitudes), and profitable (for the producers) - while medicine is expensive, scarce, and undesirable to produce.
And don't tell me health care is different because we need it to survive. Starvation is worse than dying from cancer on my list...
