Why the Doctor Can’t See You: Get ready for a two-tier system of medical care

Spread the love

Loading

John C. Goodman @ The Wall Street Journal:

Are you having trouble finding a doctor who will see you? If not, give it another year and a half. A doctor shortage is on its way.

Most provisions of the Obama health law kick in on Jan. 1, 2014. Within the decade after that, an additional 30 million people are expected to acquire health plans—and if the economic studies are correct, they will try to double their use of the health-care system.

Meanwhile, the administration never seems to tire of reminding seniors that they are entitled to a free annual checkup. Its new campaign is focused on women. Thanks to health reform, they are being told, they will have access to free breast and pelvic exams and even free contraceptives. Once ObamaCare fully takes effect, all of us will be entitled to a long list of preventive services—with no deductible or copayment.

Here is the problem: The health-care system can’t possibly deliver on the huge increase in demand for primary-care services. The original ObamaCare bill actually had a line item for increased doctor training. But this provision was zeroed out before passage, probably to keep down the cost of health reform. The result will be gridlock.

Take preventive care. ObamaCare says that health insurance must cover the tests and procedures recommended by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. What would that involve? In the American Journal of Public Health (2003), scholars at Duke University calculated that arranging for and counseling patients about all those screenings would require 1,773 hours of the average primary-care physician’s time each year, or 7.4 hours per working day.

And all of this time is time spent searching for problems and talking about the search. If the screenings turn up a real problem, there will have to be more testing and more counseling. Bottom line: To meet the promise of free preventive care nationwide, every family doctor in America would have to work full-time delivering it, leaving no time for all the other things they need to do.

When demand exceeds supply in a normal market, the price rises until it reaches a market-clearing level. But in this country, as in other developed nations, Americans do not primarily pay for care with their own money. They pay with time.

How long does it take you on the phone to make an appointment to see a doctor? How many days do you have to wait before she can see you? How long does it take to get to the doctor’s office? Once there, how long do you have to wait before being seen? These are all non-price barriers to care, and there is substantial evidence that they are more important in deterring care than the fee the doctor charges, even for low-income patients.

For example, the average wait to see a new family doctor in this country is just under three weeks, according to a 2009 survey by medical consultancy Merritt Hawkins. But in Boston, Mass.—which enacted a law under Gov. Mitt Romney that established near-universal coverage—the wait is about two months.

When people cannot find a primary-care physician who will see them in a reasonable length of time, all too often they go to hospital emergency rooms. Yet a 2007 study of California in the Annals of Emergency Medicine showed that up to 20% of the patients who entered an emergency room left without ever seeing a doctor, because they got tired of waiting. Be prepared for that situation to get worse.

Read more

0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of

3 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Our health care system is heading for the same type of socialistic system that Saddam initiated in Iraq. He promosed equal access to health care for everyone. Infact, he was successful. Everyone has equal access. On a typical day, people needing medical assistance had equal access to the health clinic or hospital. They waited in the waiting room while the doctors saw 4-5 patients. The clinic closed at noon for the noon nap most Iraqis take during the heat of the day. At about 1600, the clinic opened again, but only for those who could pay. To make the system work and for the goverment under Obamacare Saddam Care to keep doctors, doctors needed to make more than the several hundred dollars they received from the government monthly. They were allowed to practice real medicine every afternoon . This will happen here very quickly!

I have tried to calmly explain to people just how disastrous this socialist takeover of our health care system is to the sheeple who think there is such a thing as “free” health care. They either don’t have the brain power to understand, or they are spoiled children who simply refuse to understand they can’t have every whim granted magically the instant they want it. I have been reviled with vicious insults by leftists who call me ‘greedy’, ‘selfish’, ‘arrogant’ and a host of other epithets revolving around how I should quit crying about having to miss the golf course to see patients (I don’t even play golf…unlike Obama…but that is another irony altogether). Leftists are not about helping people, they are about helping THEMSELVES to other people’s money. They are only about lashing out at more successful people because like children, they succumb to jealousy rather than exert any personal effort to earn their own way in life.
I work to the point that my family feels neglected because I can’t get out of the hospital to be with them very much…and now I have some marxist bastard and his lazy, selfish minions telling me I have to spend even more time away from my family…and be paid less and taxed more in the process? Yeah…good luck with that.

I am no man’s slave.

@Hopeful Patriot: Sheeple is a good word. I shall use it extensively with your permission!