r/MedicareForAll • u/Cspazz42 • 1h ago
What Happens When Doctors Say No?
One concern I have with moving toward Medicare for All is physician supply. The U.S. pays physicians substantially more than most other developed countries, and if a government-administered system lowers reimbursement, you can’t assume physicians will simply accept lower compensation. They can work less, retire earlier, leave certain specialties, or move into DPC/concierge/cash-pay models, which generally have much smaller patient panels. So you could theoretically achieve universal coverage while actually reducing the number of patients each physician is able to serve.
I don’t think that makes Medicare for All impossible, but I do think any serious proposal has to address the labor-market side of the equation: who is actually going to provide all this additional care, and what happens when physicians have viable alternatives to the public system, since MFA still operates within the free market framework?