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November 18, 2009

17,000 new primary care physicians needed even before Obamacare

Topics: Political News and commentaries

For a preview of wait time to see a physician, you need only look to Boston, Massachusetts where the average wait time is 63 days (compared to 17 days in Miami). And as Dick Morris points out, the reason, of course, has much to do with the "health-care reform initiative" passed in 2006 in Massachusetts upon which Obamacare is modeled:

Bloomberg reported that "as many as half of doctors in the state have closed their practices to new patients, forcing many of the newly insured to turn to emergency rooms for care."

Alan Goroll, a professor at Harvard Medical School said that "the primary lesson of health-care reform in Massachusetts is that you can't increase the number of insured unless you have a strong primary-care base in place to receive them. Without that foundation ... Massachusetts has ended up with higher costs and people going to emergency rooms when they can't find a doctor."

And, a study by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, part of the federal government's Health and Human Services Department, found that expanding insurance coverage to an estimated 32 million people who now lack it would create a demand for medical services that "could be difficult to meet initially ... and could lead to price-increases, cost-shifting, and-or changes in providers' willingness to treat patients with low-reimbursement health coverage."

Indeed, the report found that the Medicare cuts contained in the House-passed bill are likely to "prove so costly to hospitals and nursing homes that they could stop taking Medicare altogether."

More ...

Here's an awesome visual presentation of the impact of Obamacare on wait times, using Legos. The presentation is based on available back in July 09; the wait times are now longer, as noted above:

Here's a video of what a phone call for health care in your city may sound like in the near future:

More Obamacare line videos here.

Posted by Abdul at November 18, 2009 7:33 AM

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