So apparently, the Obama administration is collecting “evidence” via mystery shoppers so they can blame doctors when ObamaCare fails. I’m also quite certain that the “survey” is being put together so that the Obama administration will have sob stories to produce during the 2012 elections.
Mark my words.
The “official” reason they are even doing this is because there is an increasing alarm over the shortage of primary care doctors. And there’s a shortage of primary care doctors because the doctors know that if they take patients on ObamaCare, they will lose money because ObamaCare reimburses only a fraction of the cost and being the government, their reimbursement will likely be slow coming.
Anyone who thinks it’s a doctor’s duty to help them for FREE needs to wake up from la-la land. The real world doesn’t work that way, no matter how much we WANT it to.
Obama administration officials are recruiting a team of “mystery shoppers” to pose as patients, call doctors’ offices and request appointments to see how difficult it is for people to get care when they need it.
The administration says the survey will address a “critical public policy problem”: the increasing shortage of primary care doctors, including specialists in internal medicine and family practice. It will also try to discover whether doctors are accepting patients with private insurance while turning away those in government health programs that pay lower reimbursement rates.
The government is predicting that 30 million Americans will gain health coverage when the new law (just typing that leaves a sour taste in my mouth) goes into effect.
‘These newly insured Americans will need to seek out new primary care physicians, further exacerbating the already growing problem’ of a shortage of such physicians in the United States, the Department of Health and Human Services said in a description of the project prepared for the White House.
Here’s how the government deception, oops, program, works: The mystery shopper will call a doctor’s office and will ask to see if the doctor is accepting new patients and if so, how long will they have to wait in order to see the doctor. If the shopper is asked what sort of problems they’re having, the shopper is instructed to say they have a fever, are coughing up green phlegm with a little blood in it. In other calls, they will request an annual checkup or a sports’ physical.
I would imagine most doctors would be reluctant to see a patient already spewing blood and would refer them to an urgent care of the emergency room to begin with, but you know, that only makes sense and apparently this administration doesn’t understand common sense so, go figure.
The government is eager to know whether doctors give different answers to callers depending on whether they have public insurance, like Medicaid, or private insurance, like Blue Cross and Blue Shield.
Access to care has been a concern in Massachusetts, which provides coverage under a state program cited by many in Congress as a model for President Obama’s health care overhaul.
In a recent study, the Massachusetts Medical Society found that 53 percent of family physicians and 51 percent of internal medicine physicians were not accepting new patients. When new patients could get appointments, they faced long waits, averaging 36 days to see family doctors and 48 days for internists.
Just another reason not to vote for Romney since he made the template for ObamaCare.
I wonder what will happen if (when) the Obama administration discovers that fewer doctors are accepting government health insurance? Will they MAKE them accept them? They can’t MAKE a private citizen, in their private practice DO anything they don’t want to do. I’m sure some doctors will comply with the “suggestion to take more government-insured patients,” but I’m betting MORE doctors just opt to quit their practice altogether. Why stay in a high-stress industry where you don’t get paid enough to recoup your expenses? Why stay in business if it’s more stressful to try and make ends meet because you’re not being paid enough to make your business stay afloat and just throw in the towel and give up?
And where does that leave us regular Janes and Johns? Fewer doctors and long, long, LONG wait times. Which means more people will not get the help they need and more people will either get sick and/or die.
Sounds like a heck of a deal to me.
And people being people? Will take advantage of the “free” health care and will request a doctor for every little sniffle because after all, it’s FREE! There will be no incentive to stay healthy because going to the doctor (one who will eventually see you), is FREE! Yippee!
Never mind that that “free” healthcare is costing what few taxpayers are left what little pennies they have left.
*sigh* Look. Our health care system is out of control right now. I will not dispute that. It’s expensive and there are indeed people who desperately need health care but aren’t getting it that have fallen through the cracks. But ObamaCare, which is designed to basically screw the doctors and make everyone pay for everyone else, is simply not going to work. It defies every economic factor – business just doesn’t work the way Democrats WANT it to work. It just doesn’t.
So what’s the alternative? For those that claim the GOP haven’t offered any alternatives … I’m here to say they have. The Republicans have been presenting these options from the very beginning but because it didn’t suit the lame-stream media’s agenda of making people more dependent on the government, they didn’t widely report these alternatives.
We have to clean up this mess and replace ObamaCare with something that will be fair to ALL people and that will not scare doctors away.
The question is – who’s got the balls to actually DO it?
ADDED: By the way, here is an article explaining just what is wrong with ObamaCare. This is coming STRAIGHT from the horse’s mouth – a doctor. If you don’t read it, you’re part of the problem. Half of the battle is staying informed.