One thing I have often pointed out about the Affordable
Care Act (ACA alias Obamacare) is that very few doctors participated in
the conceptualization of the legislation. The final bill focuses on
expanding Americans’ access to health insurance with a total disregard
for increasing the supply of medical professionals or facilities for
treatment. Some doctors are directing their efforts to educating their
patients and the voting public of what they believe the bill is doing to
harm patient care.The group was formed initially to help a fellow physician, Bill Cassidy, in his successful U.S. Senate election in Louisiana. They expanded their efforts to produce 10 radio spots and a video which were aired in Iowa and New Hampshire. They are now looking forward to further expanding their membership and fundraising toward educating the public about the shortcomings of the ACA.
In a conference call with a group of doctors, we went back to the period prior to the ACA’s passing and the fact that the American Medical Association (AMA) had endorsed the bill. None of the doctors are members of the AMA except for Nikan Khatabi, who practices family medicine in Laguna, CA. Khatabi stated “I am a member of the AMA because advocating for the health of my patients and rights for my colleagues doesn't take a back seat. Either you're at the dinner table or you're on the menu - period.” All of the doctors were strongly against the actions of the AMA regarding Obamacare. They all questioned why if the AMA was at the table they did not abandon the bill when they found out what was in it before it was approved.
Though the AMA guards its membership information, Jane Hughes, an ophthalmologist from San Antonio, TX, stated their inside sources tell them the AMA had just 17 percent of doctors as members prior to the ACA and has now crashed to 11%. John Ammon, an anesthesiologist from Scottsdale, AZ, stated that Docs were not at the table on the plan and that that “the AMA misled the public regarding doctor support for the plan.”
We focused most of our discussion on what the future is bringing to the practice of medicine in the United States. All the doctors agreed that many of their peers are retiring from the profession. That means first of all that Obamacare has had the opposite effect when it comes to the supply of practitioners, causing a shrinking of the pool.
