Darleen Click:
And they call it, “medical homelessness” …
While open enrollment for coverage under the Affordable Care Act is closed, many of the newly insured are finding they can’t find doctors, landing them into a state described as “medical homelessness.”Rotacare, a free clinic for the uninsured in Mountain View, is dealing with the problem firsthand.
Mirella Nguyen works at the clinic said staffers dutifully helped uninsured clients sign up for Obamacare so they would no longer need the free clinic.
But months later, the clinic’s former patients are coming back to the clinic begging for help. “They’re coming back to us now and saying I can’t find a doctor, “said Nguyen. […]
Those who can’t find a doctor are supposed to lodge a complaint with state regulators, who have been denying the existence of a doctor shortage for months.
Meanwhile, the sick and insured can’t get appointments. […]
This should not be surprising. It is accessibility that matters. Obamacare, like Medicaid/Medicare, does not guarantee that accessibility. Physicians have been refusing to accept new Medicare patients for a number of years, and similarly with Medicaid. It primarily has to do with low reimbursement rates, the slowness of reimbursement, and the paperwork. It has nothing to do with the individual patients themselves. In addition, the narrowness of Obamacare networks and the narrowness of the formularies (prescription medications) that will lead to declining health for many.
Don’t be surprised when people will die needlessly for easily treatable illnesses/conditions and easily preventable illnesses/conditions.
As this problem becomes more obvious than it already is, the drumbeat to require “greedy” doctors be forced to take obamacare insurance will grow louder. It won’t fix the problem at all, but it will make the doctor sbortage even worse as more experienced physicians simply quit medicine ratber than be forced into government slavery.
ObamaCare was a Potemkin website.
There were some policies available, but no doctors were signed on some of those policies!
People take the gov’t’s word that they are covered but the reality is that COVERAGE does not equal CARE.
To obtain CARE a policy holder must be able to find a doctor he likes and a hospital close enough to be useful.
O’Care fails on both those points all over the country.
This is unsurprising. The fantasists who chant “free healthcare for all” and push the erroneous notion that healthcare is a right or ought to be, never give thought to the unintended consequences.
Namely that reduced doctor salaries coupled with the threat of being forced to treat others in order to satisfy someone’s their “right” to healthcare, means more existing doctors will find retirement appealing, while fewer young people are drawn to become doctors because of the diminishing incentives.
Not to worry though, former Obama Medicare Chief says that inferior socialized medicine is the “next step” in progress.
Capitalist Michael Moore must be elated.
Apparently the Collective is directing drones to tell people to “just deal with it.”
@Kraken#4 – Socialism/Communism is quite dismal as we are being force into finding out….but, the people of intelligence and grounded in reality already knew that….
…I’d still like to know what was being held over Justice Roberts head…
I inject whenever I can…America Should have listened to the Tea Party….they were RIGHT!
The government and many many many in congress and other political entities use their right of free speech to fabricate lies, misinformation and HATE about the Tea Party in order to move the country in the direction of ever more socialism…you know the free speech the Government wants to suppress on everyone else…especially when they do not agree with what the elitists/democrats/liberals/progressives/RINO’s and lefty’s have demanded to happen….like Obamacare.
I have already told a story regarding Obamacare and someone who is close to me. BTW It has been OVER a month and they are still waiting for that phone call…mean while, they have NOTHING – no health care…no doctor…no return phone call or return email message….nothing…
And I have mind boggling and loathsome thoughts about those who LIED to pushed this thing….never read or understood it…then voted for it, and those who voted for this president…