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.
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.
“We have a shortage of every kind of doctor, except for plastic surgeons and dermatologists,” said Dr. G. Richard Olds, the dean of the new medical school at the University of California, Riverside, founded in part to address the region’s doctor shortage....
"Actually quite a few doctors are refusing medicare/medicaid patients because they need for money for covering country club fees, etc."
The plastic surgeons don't have to worry about that. They take cash up front on their procedures. And the others are taking Medicare that didn't in the past because the other insurance companies are charging them just to be listed as one of their providers. I had one company tell me that to remain on their list, I would have yet to pay them $5000.00 Since my annual income from their patients averaged $3000.00, I dropped off their list. And I have never paid country club dues in my life. But, now that I am in a different field, perhaps I will take up golf.
But John Y., not all doctors rock-ribbed Republicans, Catholics, Lutherans, Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists (I don't know where they stand?) Protecting their turf either for monetary, political, and for church funded health programs designed to keep people tied to a denomination because of financial considerations, not because of religious ones.
Actually quite a few doctors are refusing medicare/medicaid patients because they need for money for covering country club fees, etc. The main reason there's a shortage of doctors is because there's a cap placed on Residency--since 1977--thanks to Congress (and the AMA?) q.v., Teaching Hospitals, Medical Students Applaud Supreme Court's Health-Care Ruling
Scaredy Cat wrote: "There are not enough now." So much for the free market.
So much for unintended consequences. Even if the number of doctors stays the same, the additional forced insuring of millions will increase the ratio of patients to doctors, which will insure rationing of the healthcare they can provide.
"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,...."
Ooops! Did anybody tell the President that obamacare can't work without doctors?
But never mind at least there will be plenty of plastic surgeons so everybody can look younger.
Every Medical Doctor in the United States should quit. That would send a message to those looney liberals that their looney idea about universal health care just drives the cost of medicine up and drives doctors out of being doctors.
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