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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sylvester80 who wrote (1209546)

3/15/2020 11:59:41 PM

From: Wharf Rat

Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 1578095

"Coronavirus pandemic shows 'dysfunctionality' of US health care"

I don't think other countries are doing much better. Right now, we're being hurt by a dysfunctional public health service.
coronavirus.jhu.edu

To: sylvester80 who wrote (1209546)	3/16/2020 1:16:58 AM
From: Broken_Clock	2 Recommendations Recommended By FJB Winfastorlose Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1578095

Less physicians? broken system? Look no further than Obummer cnn.com "The ACA took this terrible broken health care system and added a lot of burden onto physicians," Hill says. "We're losing the focus of who we're supposed to be taking care of: the patient. You're not my customer anymore. Now, I've got to respond to the federal bureaucracy, not you." Jamie Thomas hears a similar refrain from doctors every day. He's the vice president of recruiting for the Atlanta office of the Medicus Firm, which places physicians in new jobs. "Older physicians or physicians that have gone into it as a passion want to have the continuity of care for their patients that I think they feel is jeopardized in this system," Thomas says. "They tell us the Affordable Care Act has negatively affected their reimbursements, there are added non-clinical duties and paperwork, and they've got to see more patients to keep up with expenses. And it kind of drives their practice away from how they've created it, which was spending time with patients." statista.com

To: sylvester80 who wrote (1209546)	3/16/2020 1:20:48 AM
From: Broken_Clock	1 Recommendation Recommended By FJB Respond to of 1578095

americanthinker.com April 21, 2019 ObamaCare robs Medicare By Chriss Street A new Rand study found that with ObamaCare robbing Medicare of $716 billion, payments to primary care doctors plunged to just 3.5 percent of total program spending. Despite funding of primary care doctors being “associated with higher quality, better outcomes, and lower costs,” the Rand Corporation was concerned that ObamaCare delivery system reforms “devoted to primary care have not been estimated nationally." Congressional Budget Office estimated after ObamaCare passed in 2010 that over a 10-year period beginning in 2013, the law would take $716 billion from Medicare to subsidize ObamaCare exchange premiums and its broad expansion of Medicaid. Pres. Obama falsely claimed that under the new law, “If you like your doctor, you can keep you doctor.” But primary care doctors filing Center for Medicare Services affidavits to “opt-out” of the program hit triple digits for the first time in 2010, with 130 leaving. The number spiked to over 1,600 in 2013; more than doubled to over 3,500 in 2015; and more than doubled again to 7,400 in 2016, according to data released by the CMS. Rand Corporation’s analysis published in JAMA Internal Medicine Journal reviewed 16 million Medicare primary care office visits across the United States. Rand concluded: “Depending on whether narrow or expansive definitions of primary care are used, primary care spending represents 2.12% to 4.88% of total medical and prescription spending by Parts A, B and D of the Medicare program.” Lead investigator Dr. Rachel O. Reid commented that although there has been no consensus about the optimal share of medical spending that should be devoted to primary care, the current spending percentage is substantially below prior estimates. The most clever “bait and switch aspect of ObamaCare was giving Medicare Primary care doctors a 10% percent annual “bonus” in the four years from 2011 to 2015. ObamaCare also raised Medicaid Primary care reimbursement rates to the same level as Medicare for 2013 and 2014 to encourage supposedly accepting ObamaCare patients. But the commercial insurance companies, such as WellPoint, that contracted with ObamaCare and Medicare Primary doctors for up to a 50 percent extra award for generating patient “nonvisits” by primary and specialty issues on the phone. According to a report by the Massachusetts Medical Society’s ‘Recruiting Physicians Today,’ “physicians who have a lot of elderly Medicare patients may want to change their payer mix.” The report clearly suggested that by dumping or restricting new Medicare patient participation, Primary care doctors could dramatically expand compensation by contracting to accept ObamaCare “younger patients, who need fewer healthcare services than older patients.” There are no good statistics regarding how many primary care doctors are dumping Medicare patients, but 21% of primary care doctors were no longer accepting new Medicare patients by 2015. The CMS saw a sharp decrease in the number of providers opting out of Medicare in 2017, after several years where thousands indicated that they did not want to participate in the program. The Trump administration has been moving aggressively to focus more Medicare reimbursement toward primary care. As a result, the number of doctor “opt-outs” slowed to 3,732 in 2017, according to the latest CMS data.

To: sylvester80 who wrote (1209546)	3/16/2020 1:25:19 AM
From: Broken_Clock	3 Recommendations Recommended By FJB majaman1978 Winfastorlose Respond to of 1578095

investors.com Doctor Shortages Explode Thanks To ObamaCare — Who Could Have Predicted That? Licensing 05:47 PM ET 08/20/2018 Health Reform: A year before ObamaCare became law, an IBD/TIPP Poll warned that it would lead to doctor shortages because many would quit or retire early. New evidence shows that our warnings were dead on. A recent report from the Association of Medical Colleges projects doctor shortages of up to 121,300 within the next 12 years. That's a 16% increase from their forecast just last year. Not only are medical schools having trouble attracting doctors (New York University plans to offer free tuition to its med students), but current physicians are cutting back on patient visits, retiring early or switching careers. An article in a recent issue of the Mayo Clinic Proceedings says that nearly one in five doctors plan to switch to part-time clinical hours, 27% plan to leave their current practice, and 9% plan to get an administrative job or switch careers entirely. Another survey found that nearly two-thirds of doctors feel burned out, depressed or both. This is already having a significant effect on patient access to doctors. A Merritt Hawkins survey of doctors in 15 metro areas found that "average new-patient physician appointment wait times have increased significantly. The average wait time for a physician appointment for the 15 large metro markets surveyed is 24.1 days, up 30% from 2014. " Getting a new-patient appointment with a family physician, for example, went from an average 19 days in 2014 to almost 30 days in 2017. To get an appointment for a heart checkup with a cardiologist, wait times climbed from seven days in 2009 to 21 days in 2017. For a well-woman exam with an OB/GYN, they went from 17 days to 26 over those years. This should not come as a surprise to anyone. Eight years ago, IBD/TIPP surveyed 1,376 practicing physicians across the country, asking them what they thought about the health reform bill Democrats had been putting together. The survey found that a surprisingly large share of doctors, 45%, "would consider leaving their practice or taking an early retirement" if Congress passed what ended up as ObamaCare. (To read more about ObamaCare, click here.) The survey generated plenty of attention — most of it from Democrats and the mainstream media who desperately wanted to get ObamaCare enacted. They viciously attacked the survey, calling it "shoddy," "out of whack," "ludicrous," "not trustworthy," "shabby" and "garbage." Turns out it was the critics of the poll who were shoddy, out of whack and not trustworthy. Subsequent surveys proved the IBD/TIPP poll right, including one taken in 2015 by the Mayo Clinic that found 54% of doctors suffering burnout, and a 2016 survey that found just over half say they participate in ObamaCare plans. Obama Mandates and Doctor Shortages One of the big drivers of doctor exits, by the way, is the Obama administration's "electronic health records" mandate, which was supposed to vastly improve the quality and efficiency of care. It's had the opposite effect. A Mayo Clinic survey found that the EHR mandate is reducing efficiency, increasing costs and paperwork hassles, and pushing more doctors to quit or retire early. A Harris Poll found that 59% of doctors say the current EHR system foisted on them by the Obama administration needs "a complete overhaul," and 40% say it imposes more challenges than benefits. ObamaCare continued what had been a long and sorry trend in health care. Government-imposed rules designed to fix some problem in the system instead generated mountains of new administrative work. The result has been that while the number of physicians in the country has climbed modestly over the past three decades, the number of health care administrators exploded. (You can see the trend in this eye-opening chart compiled by the Center for Freedom and Properity.) Driving doctors out of the medical profession and exacerbating doctor shortages was not what Obama promised when he started "reforming" health care. But it is what his heavy-handed government interventions are producing. Don't say we didn't warn you.