Oops, not so fast.
Commenter James says everything is peachy keen-o with Obamacare, notwithstanding reports that low paid workers such as those employed by McDonald’s may have their policies canceled. The basis for his optimism? I cited the “Fox News of print” aka The Wall Street Journal as my source. My bad.
How about this from Reuters (which normally makes the NY Times seem conservative):
“While previous projections showed a baseline shortage of 39,600 doctors in 2015, current estimates bring that number closer to 63,000, with a worsening of shortages through 2025,” the group said in a statement.
“The United States already was struggling with a critical physician shortage and the problem will only be exacerbated as 32 million Americans acquire health care coverage, and an additional 36 million people enter Medicare.”
Ha Ha! Now I get the joke! Sure, you all have insurance now. Just try and use it! bwahahahahahaha…(that is supposed to be the evil laugh of our leftwing overlords…)
UPDATE: I almost missed this:
There’s a reason President Obama tries so hard to convince Americans not to watch Fox News. He keeps shamelessly lying about easily verifiable facts. Evidently he figures that left-leaning media outlets won’t call him on it, so if he can only convince people not to watch FOX, he’ll be OK. Unfortunately for the president, the American people simply have to look around them to see that he isn’t being honest with them.
Campaigning in Des Moines, Iowa, yesterday, the President repeated his biggest health care reform whopper: You can keep your current health insurance. Here is what he said:
“There’s nothing in the bill that says you have to change the health insurance you’ve got right now. If you were already getting health insurance on your job, then that doesn’t change.”
Yet hours before he uttered that line, the Boston Globe reported that Harvard Pilgrim Health Care was canceling its Medicare Advantage coverage specifically because of new regulations imposed by Obama’s health care law.
The decision “was prompted by a freeze in federal reimbursements and a new requirement that insurers offering the kind of product sold by Harvard Pilgrim — a Medicare Advantage private fee for service plan — form a contracted network of doctors who agree to participate for a negotiated amount of money. Under current rules, patients can seek care from any doctor,” the Globe reported.
Go on line and apply for health insurance as a 22 year old college student with a wife and kid and see how good the coverage is for a person making a little over minimum wage when he can and barely surviving with some ambition. Then come back and tell us how it feels to be in our shoes. $250 a month and a $3000 deductable.
Yeah Right.
Reuters carried the correction today denying the report. And no, insurance companies will not collapse and die because of new health laws. However, what we need to see is a gutless congress doing something serious to reduce healthcare costs.
James–Yes, when it comes to the gutless Congress on that we agree. We need serious discussion of the issues facing our nation, not mocking testimony from comedians…
Colbert is from South Carolina. God I love this state.
As a licensed health insurance who specializes in Medicare, I can confirm that we are already seeing the shortage of primary care physicians for Medicare as the baby boomers age into Medicare at a rate of 10,000 new 65-year-olds per day. While Medicare remains to be the largest “network” of providers in American, it is growing desperately short of qualified primary care doctors. Why? Because only a small percentag of med school grads go into family practice for the reason that it doesn’t pay the bills. Medicare contributes to this problem by paying the doctor about a third of what he can make when seeing a person enrolled in group insurance. Most doctors seem to be allowing their current patients who roll over onto Medicare continue seeing them, but for beneficiares who move to a new city or state when they retire, I think we will see it become increasingly harder to find primary care physicians who will accept them as new patients unless something is done to stabilize what these physicians are being paid to see patients on Medicare.