Spying on doctors: Health care surveys go into stealth mode

I didn't find this story reported anywhere, remove if redundant.

The Obama Administration begins gathering a team of "mystery shoppers" to pose as consumers and reach out to private physicians to find out whether doctors' offices refuse patients with government health insurance in favor of those with private insurance.

This seems like a very crooked way to determine if doctors are seeing private-insured patients compared to public insured patients.

One, they are taking the time of doctor's offices to lie and act like patients. Sure it's not very long, but some offices may be extremely busy and this just adds to their tasks. Two, the patient-provider relationship should be respected, and not imitated with these fake patients. Now, secretaries will wonder about all patients in the surveyed states, is this a real patient or a fake?

Also, this survey is going to cost more than 350,000$. How large is this study and why does it cost so much?

Do you think doctor's like this?

"If federal officials are worried about access to care, they could help us. They don’t have to spy on us," Dr Stephen Albrecht, a family doctor in Olympia, Wash., told the Times.

Of course, of ultimate concern is how the data will be used. One can only speculate, but it appears that care will be compulsory and allocation will be determined by the government.

Spying on doctors:...

Obama Admin spying on doctors

You really don't need to do a study on this. Several studies are already in existence which prove that, yes, they do. I'm not saying it's completely unjustified because I can see the validity of doing it from their perspective; all I'm saying is that it's blatantly obvious that they do.