Posted on 11/16/2013 7:43:44 PM PST by tobyhill
Obamacare is intensifying the doctor shortage – though not in ways that were anticipated.
Everybody seems to have expected that Obamacare would sign up some 30 million people who don’t have health insurance, and they would overwhelm doctors’ offices. But these people – especially the young and healthy whose sky-high Obamacare premiums were supposed to finance everybody else’s subsidies – have stayed away. They know a bad deal when they see one.
Although the young and healthy aren’t going for Obamacare, the doctor shortage is intensifying, because government intervention generally is making it more expensive and difficult for doctors to do their job.
Government-run Romneycare – the model used for Obamacare – was enacted in Massachusetts in 2006, and a recent survey by the Massachusetts Medical Society found that half the state’s primary care practices aren’t accepting new patients. At practices accepting new patients, the average wait to see a family physician is 39 days, and the average wait to see an internal medicine physician is 50 days.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
They take their profession seriously and will not abandon the elderly, the ones who need medical care the most, just because the government has reduced doctors’ reimbursement and made their practice more difficult in other ways..
Add to your list a whole lot of unanswered questions. What happens if a person gets sick when they aren’t near their exchange? What’s going to assure that people can pay their deductibles, and if they can’t, will it affect the care they’re offered? Will there be any innovation at all when there’s a menu of what insurance companies cover? What happens with people who live in two (or more) locations every year? When they move? How’s anyone going to get any care when they’re sick when the doctors are booked solid with wellness checks and other freebies? What happens when a person’s economic situation changes? Will people be allowed to drop out once they’re in? And a whole host of other things I’m sure nobody thought out.
I hope you’re right. I’m on Medicare myself.
And I’ve had two years of treatment for cancer.
In my view, I’ve had access to anybody that I sought out.
Good suggestion about the clinics. Why mess with everybody’s life when you can just focus on the problem?
Are you a fellow graduate of RISAG, the Rhode Island School of Amateur Gynecology? Always remember our school motto - We kiss it and make it better. :=)
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