(06-15-2014 06:49 PM)dawgitall Wrote: You might put it that way.
I think it is a good investment both for the local economy and community health. Now that the textile mills have all shutdown our hospital system is our largest private employer. I also kind of liked the fact that when my Father-in-law had his stroke he was half a mile from emergency care as opposed to the 30-45 miles he would have been had our rural hospital not been there. Then there was my old friend David's 79 year old mother that was hit head on. I don't know if she would have survived had the hospital not been there.
Then you don't want Obamacare because it makes rural healthcare worse, not better. How do I know? Because I am an administrator at 3 rural healthcare facilities. We've lost 4 local primary care physicians recently (old age/retirement/illness) and are down to 2 private doc groups and about a dozen rural health "free' clinics. We cannot attract new private PCPs, because they are going to the cities where there is more private insurance per capita because private insurance pays better... and only the clinics can hire new docs because they are essentially exempt from mal-practice... Of course, that also means that many of these docs wouldn't be able to GET mal-practice insurance... which tells you about their history. So the fact that these people now have insurance makes absolutely no difference because although they theoretically have more choices now, in reality, they have no additional choices.
Like most government and particularly democratic programs, Obamacare makes care in the highly populated areas better at the expense of more rural care. When your local hospital closes or reduces services and you now have to go to one 15 miles away for care, you can thank Obamacare. DMC San Pablo in the Bay Area is an example of Obamacare making a bad situation worse as a result of this consolidation, even in a highly populated area.
(06-15-2014 07:08 PM)dawgitall Wrote: I understand that there is a shortage of doctors. I'm all for taking measures to encourage more to go into the field. That doesn't mean we should just stop everything until it is accomplished.
Then why are you touting the success of Obamacare when it does absolutely NOTHING to address these needs? You can fix the problem of 'insurance' very quickly. Addressing the doctor shortage will take a decade or more.... so why are you content with them kicking the problem down the road for another decade?
The 'need' Obamacare addresses would actually be far less if they had STARTED by addressing the shortages.
Why don't many doctors take Medicare or Medicaid now? Because they can keep their waiting rooms full without it. What if there were more doctors and they couldn't? They'd take them. Pretty simple. Sure, you'd want to address a few of the needs that Obamacare addresses...
but 'signing people up' for 'free' care is not in ANY way a measure of success... except as defined by the administration and touted by pawns like you.
This is honestly like putting forth a plan to make Americans more healthy by giving away workout t-shirts in front of the grocery store, and counting the number of t-shirts you hand out as a measure of success. Isn't counting the number of people who ACTUALLY WORK OUT AT THE GYM or LOSE WEIGHT a better measure of the success of the plan?
