The Doctor Won’t See You Now…
From the Associated Press in Arkansas comes a story about that state’s surgeon general, who testified yesterday “that he’s worried the state won’t have enough medical providers to care for the thousands of newly insured covered under the federal health care overhaul.” He noted that the increase in the number of insured patients will worsen physician shortages in rural areas, and worried that absent significant changes, “we’ll have financial coverage but no accessibility.”
One of the problems of the law is that it did NOT make major changes to Medicaid – a structurally flawed program that many states cannot afford now (as evidenced by the fact that governors continue to argue for an extension of the extra federal “stimulus” funding). The Medicare actuaries found that most of the coverage gains from the health care law come from the bill’s dramatic expansion of Medicaid. Yet physician reimbursements in most Medicaid programs are so low that few doctors participate currently, creating significant access problems for beneficiaries. Adding another 18 million Medicaid beneficiaries to that leaky boat could only cause it to capsize – both for the newly enrolled, and current beneficiaries as well.
Dumping more people into an unsustainable system does not constitute “reform” – and the comments from Arkansas’ surgeon general reinforce that fact.