I am gratified to learn that the Clinton administration has elected to "cure the doctor glut" as explained in today’s news. According to the official explanation, (unchallenged by the media) too many doctors exist. This somehow results in the cost of medicine being too high. (To understand this, you must have studied the "liberal" version of economics, wherein the laws of supply and demand do not apply.)
The government solution to this "glut" of doctors, is to subsidize the training hospitals $100,000 a year for each doctor they "don’t train." So: we get to pay for doctor training, and for our money, we don’t get doctors. (Makes perfect sense if you are a government bureaucrat.)
Then, in six years, when there are fewer doctors, because we paid to "not get" them, naturally, the cost of medical care will be less. As anybody knows, when you reduce the supply of a commodity for which there is even a static demand, the price for that commodity goes down. Now, since (regardless of the statistical certainty that our baby boomers are going to overwhelm the health care system in the near future) there is obviously going to be a lower demand for medical care. We obviously won’t need as many doctors in the future, so this is a good thing. Fewer doctors to meet the increased demand for medical services will doubtless result in lower prices--Right?
If the above makes sense to you, you might be interested in a land deal in the White Water area of Arkansas. If you are a "big haired" female government employee, who lives in a trailer park, the president will send a trooper to pick you up and bring you to his hotel suite where you can take some dictation, and he will explain how this program works.
Actually, what is being done, is Medicare is being cut, by Clinton. He figures that the people are just too dumb to realize it. With the media on his side, he might be right. With fewer doctors competing for less Medicare money, the doctors who exist will do well. The only way the people who will be the victims of this plan to reduce Medicare services will realize that their medical benefits (under Medicare) are being cut, would be for Newt Gingrich to endorse the program. Since everybody knows (as a result of the Democrat election campaign last fall) that it is those evil Republicans, who want to cut Medicare.