Well the paper of records, the New York Times is actually asking that. It would have been nice of them to ask that three years ago when this monstrosity was being rammed through the Congress by using our tax dollars to bribe senators (Hey Many Landrieu, yes you, the biggest whore in the history of Louisiana). Better late than never but I think it will be used for showcasing "objectivity" or some crap like that.
Doctor Shortage Likely to Worsen With Health Law
RIVERSIDE, Calif. — In the Inland Empire, an economically depressed region in Southern California, President Obama’s health care law is expected to extend insurance coverage to more than 300,000 people by 2014. But coverage will not necessarily translate into care: Local health experts doubt there will be enough doctors to meet the area’s needs. There are not enough now.
Other places around the country, including the Mississippi Delta, Detroit and suburban Phoenix, face similar problems. The Association of American Medical Colleges estimates that in 2015 the country will have 62,900 fewer doctors than needed. And that number will more than double by 2025, as the expansion of insurance coverage and the aging of baby boomers drive up demand for care. Even without the health care law, the shortfall of doctors in 2025 would still exceed 100,000.
Health experts, including many who support the law, say there is little that the government or the medical profession will be able to do to close the gap by 2014, when the law begins extending coverage to about 30 million Americans. It typically takes a decade to train a doctor...
...Experts describe a doctor shortage as an “invisible problem.” Patients still get care, but the process is often slow and difficult. In Riverside, it has left residents driving long distances to doctors, languishing on waiting lists, overusing emergency rooms and even forgoing care.
“It results in delayed care and higher levels of acuity,” said Dustin Corcoran, the chief executive of the California Medical Association, which represents 35,000 physicians. People “access the health care system through the emergency department, rather than establishing a relationship with a primary care physician who might keep them from getting sicker.”...
...Moreover, across the country, fewer than half of primary care clinicians were accepting new Medicaid patients as of 2008, making it hard for the poor to find care even when they are eligible for Medicaid. The expansion of Medicaid accounts for more than one-third of the overall growth in coverage in President Obama’s health care law.
Providers say they are bracing for the surge of the newly insured into an already strained system.
Temetry Lindsey, the chief executive of Inland Behavioral & Health Services, which provides medical care to about 12,000 area residents, many of them low income, said she was speeding patient-processing systems, packing doctors’ schedules tighter and seeking to hire more physicians....
...But the provisions within the law are expected to increase the number of primary care doctors by perhaps 3,000 in the coming decade. Communities around the country need about 45,000.
Many health experts in California said that while they welcomed the expansion of coverage, they expected that the state simply would not be ready for the new demand. “It’s going to be necessary to use the resources that we have smarter” in light of the doctor shortages, said Dr. Mark D. Smith, who heads the California HealthCare Foundation, a nonprofit group....
Now you can read the full article and it has some interesting points but I saw this one most interesting. Take a look at this chart.
Notice the shortage of doctors is worse with Obamacare. And an interesting point throughout the article and from the lips of the propagandists who push this crap. The constant use of the term "expansion of coverage" or words to that effect. Funny, there is no expansion of healthcare or medicine but of "coverage" So I'm sick, I've got cancer or diabetes or asthma and now I have coverage. Do I have care is the question. The answer is not as much as before. And you will pay more for less.
On that subject the point not mentioned is the lack of legal reform in Obamacare. Lawsuits are a major cause of medical inflation and until that is controlled by limiting punitive damages (not actual damages) it's a moot point.
Dr Thomas Sowell put it best after the Supreme Court ruled last month, "You said you could not afford to pay for doctors, medicines and hospitals, but you can afford to pay for the doctors, medicines and hospitals and bureaucrats that are coming?"
There are a few good poihts raised in this article such as allowing nurses to do more than they do now. I will add allowing a PA to do a lot more will help with minor case (e.g. flu, sprains, etc) and allow MDs to concentrate on more critical issues. But Obamacare will not increase the number of medial providers. If anything it will make medicine a less attractive career field for smart students.
But remember, you will have coverage.
Let alone the nurse shorage that already is going full swing in America right now. Let's see how 'they' deal with that one.
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