Obama Mystery Shoppers: Obama Administration to Use Stealth Patients to Enforce Federal Government Healthcare Mandates

The Obama administration is planning on using stealth patients. The stealth patients will go to doctors offices to find out if the doctors are accepting federal healthcare programs and how easy it is to get an appointment if you are under a federal safety net.

Alarmed by a shortage of primary care doctors, Obama administration officials are recruiting a team of “mystery shoppers” to pose as patients, call doctors’ offices and request appointments to see how difficult it is for people to get care when they need it.

The administration says the survey will address a “critical public policy problem”: the increasing shortage of primary care doctors, including specialists in internal medicine and family practice. It will also try to discover whether doctors are accepting patients with private insurance while turning away those in government health programs that pay lower reimbursement rates.

Once again the heavy hand of government is ready to come down on the free market pushing regulations over doctors offices that don't even engage in interstate commerce.

Obama is also worried about the doctors who are standing up to the federal tyranny known as Obamacare, and this looks like a preemptive strike against doctors who are looking to rebel and possibly quit the profession thanks to Obama's poorly designed Obamacare plan, which the model in Massachusetts shows waits for treatment have increased under Romneycare.

Federal officials predict that more than 30 million Americans will gain coverage under the health care law passed last year. “These newly insured Americans will need to seek out new primary care physicians, further exacerbating the already growing problem” of a shortage of such physicians in the United States, the Department of Health and Human Services said in a description of the project prepared for the White House.

For doctors who are obviously angry with federal healthcare mandates, this isn't winning Obama any new fans.

“I don’t like the idea of the government snooping,” said Dr. Raymond Scalettar, an internist in Washington. “It’s a pernicious practice — Big Brother tactics, which should be opposed.”

I agree. Our tax dollars shouldn't be spend to attack doctors engaging in the free market and making choices that benefit the health of their own medical practices.

According to government documents obtained from Obama administration officials, the mystery shoppers will call medical practices and ask if doctors are accepting new patients and, if so, how long the wait would be. The government is eager to know whether doctors give different answers to callers depending on whether they have public insurance, like Medicaid, or private insurance, like Blue Cross and Blue Shield.