Doctor's feelings about Obamacare

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**Relapse**

Here's a doctor in Forbes citing some facts and figures about doctor's overwhelming disapproval of Obamacare:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottatlas/2012/10/11/what-do-actual-doctors-think-about-obamacare-now/2/

Some other opinions along the same line:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/sallypipes/2012/09/17/forget-about-providers-what-do-doctors-think-of-obamacare/

http://boston.cbslocal.com/2012/07/09/a-doctors-opinion-of-obamacare/

I started looking into what doctors think about Obamacare since the election by asking some I know and checking out articles. One of my friends who teaches anatomy at a local Med School tells me the students there are wondering if it's worth continuing on or if they should seek other professions. He also tells me that once things get going full swing, doctors will be turning patients away since the insurance will be next to worthless, and we will start losing doctors faster than they are being replaced. According to him, a lot of those that can do it are quitting now.
It's not going to be an attractive proposition for someone to either spend money for medical school and never be able to repay the loan or find themselves in bondage to the government because of loans they took and can't repay.
I will end this by saying this isn't certain to happen but is the most likely scenario he and other doctors he knows envision.

**SagesStone**

Quote... articles.. for work blocked... Everyone else does it.

fething lazy...

“What’s most telling is that some of the people who are most supportive of reform are the very medical professionals who know the health care system best.” Barack Obama, October 5, 2009.

We all remember the highly publicized Rose Garden ceremony of smiling doctors in their white coats standing alongside a glowing President Obama (“you look very spiffy in your coats,” he approvingly noted) in his attempt to validate his Affordability Care Act to the public before its details were even exposed to public scrutiny.

And we also recall when the AMA endorsed ObamaCare at its inception, an endorsement that led many Americans to believe America’s doctors supported the dramatic changes to the U.S. health care system.

The problem is that, unbeknownst to the public and the press, the AMA represents only about one fourth of the nation’s doctors.

Meanwhile, contrary to those doctors selected to legitimize ObamaCare in the staged media event (where the White House actually handed out white lab coats to generate the image of official credibility), an overwhelming 70 percent of doctors said, even back in 2011, that they disagreed with the AMA’s position on health reform, while only 13 percent agreed with it. In fact, almost half of doctors in that survey even went so far as to say that the AMA stance on ObamaCare was the factor causing them to drop AMA membership.

What has happened to the opinion of doctors, now that ObamaCare has been examined in detail?

Moving the clock forward to this year, thousands of the nation’s doctors from all across the country engaged in the full spectrum of clinical practice have had the chance to digest the content of ObamaCare and to see the early impact of the law. Without the filtering by the president’s staff, and after far more exposure of the details in the ACA, the nation’s doctors have twice expressed their views about ObamaCare.

This past February, 60 percent of more than 5,000 doctors surveyed said the Obama health law would have a negative impact on patient care, while only 22 percent thought it would be positive. And more than half thought it would have a negative impact on their relationships with patients, while only 11 percent thought the doctor-patient relationship would be better. A startling 43 percent said the health care reform itself would likely lead them to retire over the next 5 years, and only 37 percent said that was an unlikely consequence of this law. It is worth repeating that sentiment to understand the impact of ObamaCare – it is viewed as being so destructive that almost half of doctors said they would “likely” soon retire directly because of the law itself.

Last month, in answer to the question “Which of the following best describes your feelings about the ACA?” 55 percent of more than 3,000 doctors chose “repeal and replace” whereas 40 percent said “implement and improve” it.

But perhaps the most impressive statement of all is found in looking at the doctors’ voting intentions. Votes for Governor Romney trounced those for President Obama by 19 percentage points (55 to 36 percent), with only 5 percent undecided. Of the nearly 1,000 doctors calling themselves “independents,” 51 percent planned to vote for Mitt Romney, while 35 percent planned to vote for Barack Obama. Doctors – those “professionals who know the health care system best” – are overwhelmingly voting for the candidate who repeatedly vows to repeal ObamaCare.

It is also instructive to look back to the 2008 election. Of those doctors who voted for Obama in 2008, 15 percent now say they will abandon the president and vote for Governor Romney; another 5 percent of the former Obama voters are still undecided. Only 2 percent of those who voted for McCain plan to vote for Obama this time around. And for those former Obama voters who now plan to vote for Romney, what is the most common reason given for this switch? Specifically, the president’s health reform law.

Why do America’s doctors overwhelmingly disagree with the changes to U.S. health care by ObamaCare?

Perhaps America’s doctors, those who actually have experience and knowledge about how American health care functions, realize how ObamaCare would dumb down its excellence, shackle doctors, and restrict access to care for patients, while transforming health care toward the centralized bureaucracies of Western Europe or Canada.

Perhaps America’s doctors know about the scandalous deficiency of access in centralized systems, countries where government’s officials themselves circumvent restrictions when their own personal care is at stake. Like when England’s NHS spent more than 1.5 million pounds to pay for thousands of its own staff members to leapfrog their own waiting lists in 2009; or when Italy’s Prime Minister Berlusconi chose to have his heart pacemaker surgery at the Cleveland Clinic in 2006, rather than in Italy; or perhaps when the Canadian Prime Minister of Newfoundland and Labrador, Danny Williams, traveled to the US in 2010 to circumvent Canada’s restrictive system for his own heart valve procedure, because, as he explained, “This was my heart, my choice and my health,” and “I did not sign away my right to get the best possible health care for myself when I entered politics.”

Perhaps America’s doctors see the repeated behind-the-scenes maneuvers by our political leaders in the US, frankly by some of the strongest advocates for more government control of US health care when they or their families are sick. Like when President Obama, an on-the-record supporter of single- payer systems (“I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care program”on June 30, 2003), was asked pointedly in 2009 to promise that he would not seek out-of-plan help for his wife or daughters if they became sick and the public plan he was then proposing limited their options, the president refused, and instead replied, “If it’s my family member, if it’s my wife, if it’s my children, if it’s my grandmother, I always want them to get the very best care.” Time and time again, these same outspoken advocates of nationalized health systems for the rest of us, like the late Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, have exercised their personal freedoms unique to our system for the latest diagnostic tests, the most sophisticated surgical techniques, the most innovative medical therapies, the newest drugs, and the best doctors in the world – right here, in America, where those choices were uniquely available – when confronted with their own personal illnesses.

At the time, President Obama appeared thoughtful and logical back in 2009, when he assured our nation that America’s doctors, the experts in medical care, the doctors who supply the vast majority of innovation and the training for most of the world in health care advances, supported his radical transformation of American health care. After all, he said they “would not be supporting health insurance reform if they really believed that it would lead to government bureaucrats making decisions that are best left to doctors.” But in retrospect, maybe he should have actually listened, instead of passing out more white coats for the willing few.

Scott W. Atlas, MD is the David and Joan Traitel Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, an advisor to the Romney for President campaign, and author of the recently published book In Excellent Health: Setting the Record Straight on America’s Health Care (Hoover Press, 2011).

**Ouze**

Relapse wrote:
Here's a doctor in Forbes citing some facts and figures about doctor's overwhelming disapproval of Obamacare:

Obamacare was passed by the representative government of this country, it was challenged in the Supreme Court, and it was found constitutional. In 2012, the Republican Party nominated a candidate who stated he would repeal Obamacare. He was overwhelmingly defeated.

It is the law of the land and is not going to be repealed no matter how many butthurt articles are posted on the internet.

**Relapse**

Ouze wrote:
Relapse wrote:
Here's a doctor in Forbes citing some facts and figures about doctor's overwhelming disapproval of Obamacare:

Obamacare was passed by the representative government of this country, it was challenged in the Supreme Court, and it was found constitutional. In 2012, the Republican Party nominated a candidate who stated he would repeal Obamacare. He was overwhelmingly defeated.

It is the law of the land and is not going to be repealed no matter how many butthurt articles are posted on the internet.

Might be the law of the land, but that doesn't mean you're going to have the doctors you want in a few years. By the way, a popular vote victory of a couple million is not an overwhelming defeat.

**Mannahnin**

We voted for him and it twice. We voted him into office once when he promised to work toward universal healthcare, and then we re-elected him after we saw what he managed to get passed into law.

I note that this article uses the phrase "on the record supporter of single-payer" like that's a bad thing.

**Ouze**

It would have been an "overwhelming defeat", per Michael Barone, had Romney won by less then that margin.

Today, we have a thread about how Obamacare is doing to ruin the practice of medicine according to a doctor you know. 3 days ago, you started a thread about how Obamacare will affect business, according to some small business owners you know. I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm rapt with suspense to see what Saturday's Obamacare thread will be about. Do you know any plumbers? How will they be affected? What about grocery checkers you might chat up as you pass through the express lane? Time will only tell!

**Relapse**

Ouze wrote:
It would have been an "overwhelming defeat", per Michael Barone, had Romney won by less then that margin.

Today, we have a thread about how Obamacare is doing to ruin the practice of medicine according to a doctor you know. 3 days ago, you started a thread about how Obamacare will affect business, according to some small business owners you know. I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm rapt with suspense to see what Saturday's Obamacare thread will be about. Do you know any plumbers? How will they be affected? What about grocery checkers you might chat up as you pass through the express lane? Time will only tell!

You apparently overlooked the part in the first article where it stated 43% of doctors say that the healthcare reform will likely lead them to retire in the next 5 years, but hey, it was voted for, so everything will be alright with close to half the doctors potentialy gone. All your whining ain't gonna help that if it happens.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/why_doctors_hate_obamacare_pTUi4Xq0STVKrdegpi1N1M

**Ouze**

What a fascinating article. A doctor who is also an advisor to the Romney campaign wrote an article critical of Romney's opponent's signature legislation, a month before the election? Do tell!

Surely Romney will win the election now!

**hotsauceman1**

I wonder what would have the Social Security Threads have been like if the internet was around back then.
Also I cant see Doctors just leaving the field they spent years on training. Besides I don't want a Doctor who is only in it for the money. In my experience they are the worst.

**Relapse**

hotsauceman1 wrote:
I wonder what would have the Social Security Threads have been like if the internet was around back then.
Also I cant see Doctors just leaving the field they spent years on training. Besides I don't want a Doctor who is only in it for the money. In my experience they are the worst.

It depends on how much they can put up with in dealing with all the new regulations and paperwork. The more experienced doctors that have been in medicine for several years will be able to afford to quit and according to the articles will if they decide the BS factor they have to deal with is too much. The upcoming generation of medical students appear to now have a signifigant number questioning medicine as a viable carreer.
There are many doctors that have quit the private sector over high malpractice premiums and this will be the straw that broke the camels back
For quite a few more.

**hotsauceman1**

Being a doctor will always be a lucrative career. From the sound of it, those new students are just unprepared for the work.
They will work in a field dealing with lives, there will always be risks and regulations.

**Mannahnin**

Of course if we had single-payer, we'd have fewer regulations, rules, payment schemes and less complicated paperwork. Because doctors, their administrative staff, and patients wouldn't have to deal with the vast labyrinth of private insurance policies, conflicting coverages, varying benefits and claims procedures.

I'm curious about the statistics quoted. I'd like to see the survey in question and its methodology.

"High malpractice premiums" is a concept frequently raised by insurance company and corporate tort reform lobbyists, trying to sell a false promise that said premiums will go down if legislatures prevent juries from levying appropriately high judgments. A concept that's never worked out in practice.

**Ouze**

Not enough doctors? Sounds like a job for the invisible hand of the free market.

**Cheesecat**

Doctors are loaded so they don't have to worry too much about money.

**sebster**

It's a Forbes article from a guy who worked on the Romney campaign.
"Scott W. Atlas, MD is the David and Joan Traitel Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, an advisor to the Romney for President campaign"

I mean, post an article from a guy tied to the hip of the GOP... what do you think is going to come from this?

Relapse wrote:
Might be the law of the land, but that doesn't mean you're going to have the doctors you want in a few years. By the way, a popular vote victory of a couple million is not an overwhelming defeat.

There's never been a change in the health industry that hasn't led to doctors declaring they're going to retire. And yet you never actually see retirements from any of these changes.

Mannahnin wrote:
I note that this article uses the phrase "on the record supporter of single-payer" like that's a bad thing.

It's even dumber when you read the survey linked to in the article, which made such a big deal about Obama people leaving the AMA because of support for ACA. When if you actually look at the survey you'd note 25% of doctors list the AMA's lack of support for single payer as a major reason for them considering leaving.

And then you look at the regional distribution of the doctors, and see that 25% are from the South East, and 5% from New England, and you wonder if the given results are even all the representative anyway.

**hotsauceman1**

Really? And here scrubs taught me they are all poor who cant afford apartments.

**Jihadin**

Back to ACA bashing and scaring...oh well.....Obama won another four years so all everyone has to do is watch how the chips fall. BTW he blamed Bush again today due to the Fiscal Cliff.

**Stormfather**

Anecdote alert!

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/health-science-technology/dollars-and-dentists/complaints-about-kids-care-follow-kool-smiles/

Government healthcare- in this case, Medicaid regarding dental work, is far from a perfect system that rewards healthcare practitioners for quantity over quality, and the low profit margins unfortunately lead to practitioners gaming the system to find procedures that pay, rather than procedures that are appropriate. The cited article is an excellent example of this. Medicaid pays $100 for a composite filling. That's a joke- imagine if your boss arbitrarily decided to cut your wage by 50% or 66%. And it's not about lining pockets, either- your dentist has student loans to fulfill, staff salaries to pay, office rent due at the end of the month. The equipment in the office all needs to be paid for- that blue flashlight used to cure a filling costs $1400 alone. Xrays cost money, the malpractice insurance check has to be in the mail by 5pm. Lets not forget the lidocaine and composite material used during the procedure. The remaining profit margin on that $100 filling is tiny- that's why a filling, done properly, takes a bit of time and costs $200 or more (depending on a lot of factors).

And as far as 'your doctor shouldn't be in it for the money'. Doctors have to be in it for the money- they graduate no younger than 25, with about $300,000 of educational investment- most likely in loans. That's a deep hole, and it gets deeper, fast. Your office likely spends half a million dollars or more every year on rent, equipment, insurance, advertising, market research, salaries, and training. Uncle Sam isn't doing you any favors with his medicare payments. I'm not saying every doctor is out to screw you over- most are hardworking, dedicated, gregarious individuals who sacrificed the best years of their life in the name of education. But your doctor's also got his eye on the bottom line, because there's a certain amount of money he needs to make to stay in business, and if you cut payouts too much, quality of care will invariably suffer. The average MD is making less per hour than many would suspect.

Don't get me wrong- I hope I'm still in practice the day that everyone gets quality insurance that allows for quality care. But the system is broken, overburdened with financial waste, moneygrab lawsuits, and bureaucratic inefficiency. Expanding the scope of a flawed system will not improve it, it will merely magnify the problems already present. I think this is why a lot of doctors are frustrated with the changes in the pipeline- I know I would be.

Cheesecat wrote:
Doctors are loaded so they don't have to worry too much about money.

http://benbrownmd.wordpress.com/

Granted, it's from a MD who's lamenting the fact that he's not making enough money. But he makes a lot of powerful points in there. Doctors walk home with less money than most people realize.

**sebster**

hotsauceman1 wrote:
Being a doctor will always be a lucrative career. From the sound of it, those new students are just unprepared for the work.
They will work in a field dealing with lives, there will always be risks and regulations.

Students are always threatening to drop out of medical school. Because it's really god damn hard. Some of them even do it.

Then they move into residency, and that's even harder, if anything. And so they're constantly threatening to quit. Some of them even do it.

And then they become doctors. And they're paid very well for (as they should be), which means they can actually see the end of the tunnel, even from an early age they can glimpse the chance of retirement in just a few years. You see the same thinking among stockbrokers, and other high paid professions. But then another year rolls by, and the car gets upgraded and then feth it, why not get that Lexus with all the features, and so retirement remains five years away like it always does. And that's exactly what you'd expect, because hardly anyone walks away from the kind of really high income and social respect that being a doctor gives you.

But then you get people lobbying against healthcare reform, not just the AMA, but any healthcare reform anywhere in the world. And of course most people in medicine aren't going to like it. No-one likes change, no matter what the change - that's why it's so hard to manage reform of any kind. And so all those people, who are finding medical school or residency so hard, or doctors who are dreaming of having enough money to not have to work anymore... they're going to think this new reform, whatever it is, will tip them over the edge.

And then political hacks will report that, and some people will believe it.

And then it will happen, and doctors won't disappear, and people won't think about it any more. They'll just move on to the next big scary thing.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Stormfather wrote:
Government healthcare- in this case, Medicaid regarding dental work, is far from a perfect system that rewards healthcare practitioners for quantity over quality, and the low profit margins unfortunately lead to practitioners gaming the system to find procedures that pay, rather than procedures that are appropriate.

So you're in favour of the ACA's reforms to focus on payment for treatment rather than payment for procedure?

**whembly**

@Stormfather: ". Expanding the scope of a flawed system will not improve it, it will merely magnify the problems already present." That is exactly how I view the ACA...

**Cryonicleech**

I honestly hope the entirety of the country explodes and all the horrible things that people say will happen do, just so we don't have to see the same tired nonsense over and over.

It's not enough to just disagree, eh?

**sebster**

Stormfather wrote:
Granted, it's from a MD who's lamenting the fact that he's not making enough money. But he makes a lot of powerful points in there. Doctors walk home with less money than most people realize.

"less money than most people realise" is a pretty vague standard though. I mean, it's still a lot of money.

Thing is, though, we need for doctors to be paid very well. It's a job that only the smartest can do, and it's a really hard work with a long lead in time before you get paid well. If the pay at the end of it wasn't excellent, then there would be a shortfall of doctors, as the smartest would start studying law or business or whatever else offered top end salaries.

**Stormfather**

sebster wrote:

Stormfather wrote:
Government healthcare- in this case, Medicaid regarding dental work, is far from a perfect system that rewards healthcare practitioners for quantity over quality, and the low profit margins unfortunately lead to practitioners gaming the system to find procedures that pay, rather than procedures that are appropriate.

So you're in favour of the ACA's reforms to focus on payment for treatment rather than payment for procedure?

Absolutely. It's a fantastic idea in principle, and probably attainable in practice. I think a lot of healthcare providers feel the same way about the end goal, though there's a lot of concern over the 'growing pains' of implementation- and absolute fear over what happens if the program gets half-arsed.

sebster wrote:
Stormfather wrote:
Granted, it's from a MD who's lamenting the fact that he's not making enough money. But he makes a lot of powerful points in there. Doctors walk home with less money than most people realize.

"less money than most people realise" is a pretty vague standard though. I mean, it's still a lot of money.

Thing is, though, we need for doctors to be paid very well. It's a job that only the smartest can do, and it's a really hard work with a long lead in time before you get paid well. If the pay at the end of it wasn't excellent, then there would be a shortfall of doctors, as the smartest would start studying law or business or whatever else offered top end salaries.

My thoughts exactly.

whembly wrote:
@Stormfather: ". Expanding the scope of a flawed system will not improve it, it will merely magnify the problems already present." That is exactly how I view the ACA...

ACA has the potential to be the worst thing to happen to US healthcare in quite a while. It also has the potential to be the best thing to happen to US healthcare in that same timeframe. I do think, however, that a change to the current system has now become inevitable. I just hope that the development and implementation of the next system is done carefully and with a lot of foresight, along with input from experts from every level of the system. Time will tell what happens, I suppose.

**Maddermax**

Hmm, lets see, most of these "doctors hate Obamacare" links are talking about surveys of doctors, which have a majority of those surveyed wanting to "repeal and replace" obamacare. Lets look at the actual survey from Jackson and Coker then...

Ahh, a self selected survey with a 3% response rate. That sounds representative! I'm sure that could in NO WAY cause biased results. Lets take a look at the demographics:

Males from the south don't like Obama you say? Oh my goodness, that's startling news - bring my fainting couch immediately!

Yeah, the AMA might not represent every doctor, but I'll take the AMA's opinions of Obamacare as far more representitive than this bullshiat survey.

**d-usa**

How do all these other countries even function without having doctors that are able to practice due to not having free market capitalism everywhere...

**sebster**

Maddermax wrote:
Hmm, lets see, most of these "doctors hate Obamacare" links are talking about surveys of doctors, which have a majority of those surveyed wanting to "repeal and replace" obamacare. Lets look at the actual survey from Jackson and Coker then...

Nice work. I saw the screwy regions of the doctors, but didn't see it was self selected response group coming in at 3%.

At which point we're reading an article from "Scott W. Atlas, MD is the David and Joan Traitel Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, an advisor to the Romney for President campaign"... that is using a woefully unrepresentative survey.

So whatever. This is done people. Waste of time. No point being here.

**Fafnir**

d-usa wrote:
How do all these other countries even function without having doctors that are able to practice due to not having free market capitalism everywhere...

We don't. Ever wonder why other countries are portrayed as being so much more healthy? It's because one bad papercut and you're done. I remember when Grandma Netta once got a splinter in her thumb. We all tearfully said goodbye, as dad took her out behind the shed. Never saw her again.

**sebster**

Fafnir wrote:
We don't. Ever wonder why other countries are portrayed as being so much more healthy? It's because one bad papercut and you're done. I remember when Grandma Netta once got a splinter in her thumb. We all tearfully said goodbye, as dad took her out behind the shed. Never saw her again.

You have sheds!? We stopped having sheds when we socialised the shed making industry. All the shed makers said they'd retire but tragically we didn't believe them. So here in Oz if someone sprains an ankle or something we just drop them into the spider holes.

**d-usa**

sebster wrote:
Fafnir wrote:
We don't. Ever wonder why other countries are portrayed as being so much more healthy? It's because one bad papercut and you're done. I remember when Grandma Netta once got a splinter in her thumb. We all tearfully said goodbye, as dad took her out behind the shed. Never saw her again.

You have sheds!? We stopped having sheds when we socialised the shed making industry. All the shed makers said they'd retire but tragically we didn't believe them. So here in Oz if someone sprains an ankle or something we just drop them into the spider holes.

I always figured you would just strap them to a kangaroo and watch them hop over the horizon...

**azazel the cat**

Oh noes!!!1

Now you'll have to 'settle' for the kind of doctors like those found in Canada. Somehow, despite not being paid a million dollars a year, our doctors manage to perform their jobs. Maybe that's because the kind of doctor you want is the one with his/her own internal motivation for helping people, and not the one that's only in it for the paycheque.

The silly little first-year-economics-student-with-a-pedestrian-and-patriarchal-worldview-and-decided-to-write-an-article is silly, and should to masturbate to Atlas Shrugged again. The OP's article is about as credible as the myriad "I'm moving to ________ if Obama wins" articles out there.