Survey: 83% of Doctors Have Considered Quitting Over Obamacare

After 12 years of school and residency, you’d think it would take wild horses to drag a physician away from his practice.

In reality, all it might take is Obamacare.

Daily Caller:

Eighty-three percent of American physicians have considered leaving their practices over President Barack Obama’s health care reform law, according to a survey released by the Doctor Patient Medical Association.

The DPMA, a non-partisan association of doctors and patients, surveyed a random selection of 699 doctors nationwide. The survey found that the majority have thought about bailing out of their careers over the legislation, which was upheld last month by the Supreme Court.

Even if doctors do not quit their jobs over the ruling, America will face a shortage of at least 90,000 doctors by 2020. The new health care law increases demand for physicians by expanding insurance coverage. This change will exacerbate the current shortage as more Americans live past 65.

By 2025 the shortage will balloon to over 130,000, Len Marquez, the director of government relations at the American Association of Medical Colleges, told The Daily Caller.

“One of our primary concerns is that you’ve got an aging physician workforce and you have these new beneficiaries — these newly insured people — coming through the system,” he said. “There will be strains and there will be physician shortages.”

The DPMA found that many doctors do not believe the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will lead to better access to medical care for the majority of Americans, co-founder of the DPMA Kathryn Serkes told TheDC.

“Doctors clearly understand what Washington does not — that a piece of paper that says you are ‘covered’ by insurance or ‘enrolled’ in Medicare or Medicaid does not translate to actual medical care when doctors can’t afford to see patients at the lowball payments, and patients have to jump through government and insurance company bureaucratic hoops,” she said.

Watch for the return of the traveling snake oil salesman. The wait times to see a doctor are going to be measured in months, home remedies will no doubt make a huge comeback. (I’m not talking about “homeopathy” which is relatively harmless.)

And the snake oil salesman has a role model he can look up to; Barack Obama. If the president can tell a passel of lies to sell his witches brew of, health insurance reform, who’s to say a snake oil salesman should be held to account for telling fibs about his product?

I recommend that all parents designate at least one of their children for medical school. Having a child as a doctor may be the only way to see a physician in the world created by Obamacare.