One of the distinctions that has not been clearly made in the discussion of ObamaCare is the difference between having a card that says you have medical insurance and actually being able to obtain medical care when you need it. Somehow that has been pretty much left out of the discussion. Well, as theory meets reality, access to care (regardless of whether or not you have insurance) will become an issue.
Yesterday the New York Times posted a story about what is happening to California’s Medicaid program as a result of ObamaCare.
The article tells the story of one California doctor:
Dr. Ted Mazer is one of the few ear, nose and throat specialists in this region who treat low-income people on Medicaid, so many of his patients travel long distances to see him.
But now, as California’s Medicaid program is preparing for a major expansion under President Obama’s health care law, Dr. Mazer says he cannot accept additional patients under the government insurance program for a simple reason: It does not pay enough.
“It’s a bad situation that is likely to be made worse,” he said.
His view is shared by many doctors around the country. Medicaid for years has struggled with a shortage of doctors willing to accept its low reimbursement rates and red tape, forcing many patients to wait for care, particularly from specialists like Dr. Mazer.
In theory, ObamaCare was supposed to help people who were not able to afford health insurance to get medical care. In practice, ObamaCare will probably result in less care and more people with serious health issues not getting the care they need. The promise of “if you like your insurance, you can keep it” has been proven to be false, and now the promise of access to medical care for all Americans is also turning out to be false.
The article further reports:
In California, with the nation’s largest Medicaid population, many doctors say they are already overwhelmed and are unable to take on more low-income patients. Dr. Hector Flores, a primary care doctor in East Los Angeles whose practice has 26,000 patients, more than a third of whom are on Medicaid, said he could accommodate an additional 1,000 Medicaid patients at most.
“There could easily be 10,000 patients looking for us, and we’re just not going to be able to serve them,” said Dr. Flores, who is also the chairman of the family medicine department at White Memorial Medical Center in Los Angeles.
We need to repeal ObamaCare before it does any more damage and replace it with a private-sector-based plan that actually works. If we don’t stop this train wreck now, we may not be able to stop it later.
