What happens if, just as with private health insurance carriers, doctors are driven by the imposition of price-undercutting expanded Medicaid that forces them to practice medicine at an unsustainable financial loss to throw up their hands, give up, and exit the medical profession?
Answer: the feds will conscript them right back into it as public sector employees, under the usual "crisis" justification.
This is another of the predictions that many of us made five years ago that is moving closer and closer to real-world realization:
A slim majority of doctors say ObamaCare has had a negative impact on medical practice, including on the quality and cost of healthcare, a new report shows.
In the survey posted by the Journal of the American Association, 52% of doctors say they look on ObamaCare as unfavorable to the general medical situation; 48% say it's favorable.
"Many providers feel that the amount of time they have with each patient and the time they spend on insurance administration issues have gotten worse," the report states.
"Four of ten physicians and more than a third of mid-level providers said the amount of time they have available to spend with each patient has gotten worse since January 2014."
In other findings from the doctors surveyed, the report finds:
36% say ObamaCare had a negative impact on the medical practice overall; 23% said it had a positive impact and 31% it had no impact.
25% say ObamaCare had a negative impact on the quality of patient care, 18% said it had a positive impact.
35% said ObamaCare had a negative impact on the ability to meet patient demand; 10% said it had a positive impact.
44% said ObamaCare had a negative impact on the cost of patient healthcare; 21% said it had a positive impact.
48% said they had positive feelings about ObamaCare related to patients' access to health care; 24% reported a negative impression.
I interpret the above as, "It's great that more people have access to health care, but we are unable to provide it to them and are not willing to go bankrupt trying to do so." Which is another way of saying that fewer people have access to health care, not more. Which is what happens when you impose and enforce policies that shrink the supply of medical providers and services. Which is what happens when you force the price of medical services downwards while demand for medical services is skyrocketing.
Economics 101, ladies and gentlemen. And it wouldn't take all doctors quitting in protest, but merely half, or a third, or even a quarter, to create a critical shortage of medical services. At that point, what would the feds be more likely to do after years of ObamaCare being entrenched? Repeal it and go back to unfettered free market health care, or take the final step towards socialized single-payer medicine and physician conscription?
History 101, ladies and gentlemen.
Or we could repeal it now, assuming it isn't already too late.
Which I do.
Seems like an easy choice to me.
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