Suddenly, NY Times Realizes Obamacare Prompts Doctor Shortages

Now that Obamacare has jumped the hurdle of the Supreme Court, the New York Times has decided to give us the bad news: there are nowhere near enough doctors in the country, and the problems will get exponentially worse with the addition of millions soon to be insured by Obamacare. The Association of American Medical Colleges estimates  that in less than three years the country will be almost 700,000 doctors short.

The danger of Obamadare is that without it, by 2025 the projected number of doctors would be more than 100,000 too little, but with Obamacare, the number would be almost 50% more than that.

Dr. G. Richard Olds, the dean of the new medical school at the University of California, Riverside, said, “We have a shortage of every kind of doctor, except for plastic surgeons and dermatologist.”

Dustin Corcoran, the chief executive of the California Medical Association, which represents 35,000 physicians, said:

It results in delayed care and higher levels of acuity. (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.

The federal government has recommended that a given region have 60 to 80 primary care doctors per 100,000 residents, and 85 to 105 specialists. In the worst area for doctor shortages in California, the Inland Empire, there are roughly 40 primary care doctors and 70 specialists per 100,000 residents.

With the huge expansion of Medicaid patients under ObamaCare, the results could be catastrophic.  Temetry Lindsey, the chief executive of Inland Behavioral & Health Services, which provides medical care to thousands of low-income residents, said,

“We know we are going to be overrun at some point.”  She estimated that the number of patients would bulge from 10,000 to 25,000 residents by 2014.

And it’s not just Medicaid that will overburden doctors; Medicare officials predict that enrollment will grow from its present 50.7 million to 73.2 million in 2025.

And the Obama Administration will be billing you for all of this. ObamaCare increases Medicaid’s primary care payment rates in 2013 and 2014. It will pay more money to train new primary care doctors and compensate them for working in underserved communities.

The Times reluctantly admits: “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.”