The Real Effect of Obamacare on American Physicians.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act coupled with the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, will undoubtedly have profound, far reaching effects on America's medical workforce. Specially, Physicians are going to be impacted tremendously. This impact, however, is not good. Doctors will be subjected to increased government regulation and oversight. In addition, physicians will be force-fed an increasingly unreliable, anemic reimbursement system. Third-party payment mechanisms have wreaked havoc on the overall integrity and reliance of the medical profession. Obamacare is poised to highlight and bolster the worst of these facets. The new law will push to expand Medicaid coverage by 18 million individuals. Medicare and Medicaid already fail to supply rates equitable or close to private rates. On average, physicians working with Medicare are paid 81% of private payment value and those working with Medicaid are paid just 56%. This massive gap has resulted in difficulties in health care access. It has fueled hospital emergency room crowding and devastated low-income patients. Recent surveys suggest that as many as 70% of doctors would seriously consider dropping out of government health programs. Obamacare does nothing to effectively alter the system of government payment. Instead it expands already stretched entitlement programs and increases regulatory measures. More bureaucracy and red tape is simply not the answer. The long-term effects of Obamacare could be stiff and irreversible. Physicians will begin to completely opt out of Medicare and Medicaid. The prognosis for the profession's overall health and sustainability could be just as bleak. Medical students will stray away from primary care and desperately needed specialties - some may opt out of the medical profession all together. America is already facing a shortage of physicians. Obamacare may very well push those figures to the breaking point.