RomneyCare Redux
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Monday, August 24, 2009 4:20 PM PT
Reform: If Massachusetts is any guide, the passage of ObamaCare is almost certain to increase demand and worsen the shortage of doctors. Access to health care doesn't mean much if there's no doctor to provide it.
Suppose health care reform passes and all are insured, by force or otherwise. The U.S. will be short 124,400 front-line physicians by 2025, according to the Association of Medical Colleges. That does not include the 15,585 new primary-care providers the administration plan is estimated to require.
The Massachusetts reforms enacted in 2006, designed to provide universal coverage, provide an insight into what we might expect under ObamaCare and the law of unintended consequences. Dubbed RomneyCare after former Gov. Mitt Romney, they have slowly transformed the Bay State into Canada.
Kevin Pho, a primary care physician in Portsmouth, N.H., writes on CNN.com that while his Massachusetts neighbor is often held up as a model for national health reform, the reality is different.
Some 97% of Massachusetts citizens have health insurance, the highest percentage in the country. The state also has the highest concentration of doctors in the country. Sounds ideal. But "less publicized," Pho says, "are the unintended consequences that the influx of half a million newly insured patients has had on an unprepared primary care system."
The Massachusetts Medical Society reports that the time for a new patient looking for a primary care doctor now ranges from 36 to 50 days. Half of all internal medicine physicians have closed their doors to new patients.
When Massachusetts mandated health insurance for every citizen, visits to the state's emergency rooms jumped 7% in two years because many people did not have access to a primary care physician. This increases costs, since emergency room care can be up to 10 times more expensive than an office visit for the same condition.
"Promised coverage is not the same thing as care," Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, told the Washington Examiner. "All you're getting is a place in the waiting lines."
Those lines will get even longer as overburdened physicians cut their workload or retire altogether. A survey last fall of 270,000 primary care physicians by the Physicians Foundation found that 30% expected to see fewer patients, 13% would find something that did not involve patient care, and 11% planned to retire.
"How is Obama going to cover 50 million new people without any more doctors or nurses?" asks former Clinton adviser Dick Morris. "The answer is he is not. What that's going to mean is rationing."
Also consider that, according to FactCheck.org, abortion will be a covered service under the House bill (H.R. 3200). With the conscience clause endangered, and the Freedom of Choice Act still hovering in the wings, what will Catholic physicians do?
According to the Catholic Health Association, Catholic hospitals make up 13% of the nation's nearly 5,000 hospitals and employ more than 600,000 people. CHA says one of every six Americans hospitalized in the U.S. is cared for in a Catholic hospital.
The combination of fewer doctors, more patients and government insurance spells less access to care, even rationing.
ibdeditorials.com |
